Behind the shop

LISTEN. In Happiness today we're on to the next batch of answers to Montaigne's ultimate question: How to live?

5. Survive love and loss. 6. Use little tricks. 7. Question everything. 8. Keep a private room behind the shop.

Montaigne's great lost love was that of his slightly older friend La Boetie at just age 32, "soon to be 33... God granted me this grace, that all my life up to now has been full of health and happiness." I'd not have been so gracious and grateful myself, at that age. 

But of course, life expectancy in 1563--even adjusted for the Plague--was not much more. Still, it's a remarkably equanimous parting judgment. Will I pronounce anything like it at 80 or 90? Hope so. My late father was full of gratitude for the life he'd enjoyed when he exited at not quite 80. I don't think genes exactly code for that, I'm going to have to continue to work on acquiring the requisite ataraxia. 

Among the tricks that enable such a shift of outlook is the epeckho, the willing suspension or "holding back" of belief. Skepticism, translated into Socratic humility, is one solid source of self-preservation. But don't confuse this with Pyrrho's willful refusal to commit, which led him constantly to refrain from action and intent. Montaigne's suspension is a way of treading lightly and being flexible, but it's not an arrested stasis. Montaigne preferred to move, in contrast as well to Descartes meditatively transfixed by the flames he said may or may not possess substantial existence. “Montaigne did his thinking in a richly populated environment…Descartes needed motionless withdrawal.”

And then there's Blaise Pascal, shrinking from the silent stars and annoyed by his peers “playing the lute, singing, writing verse, tilting at the ring” and generally just getting on with living human lives rather than agonizing over the ultimate fate of their souls. Montaigne the humanist approved of lute-playing (etc.), pondering and marveling at the fascinating varieties of ways to be human.

He preferred to do that while walking and riding. Much to his credit, he did climb back onto his horse, when not perambulating on shank's mare. But even the most frenetic peripatetic must eventually retreat to the safe enclosure of walls, so Montaigne ascended his tower and found “real liberty” in the unobstructed country of the mind. I go to my ramshackle Little House in search of the same mental expansiveness. One of the great things about minds is their capacity to convert literal shacks to figurative towers. 

I'll be retreating to mine shortly, apparently we're about to be visited by painters. 

A modest retreat, but my own.