Could I Become a Stoic?

 

Monday the sun shone in Northport.

Long ago, back in the Middle Ages of my life—my early Middle Ages, that is—in the university office where I worked for a while there was a faculty member whose positive attitude and relentless good cheer bordered on mania. Over time I came to appreciate Jack's irrepressible good humor but could not buy into his oft-proclaimed belief that “There are no problems! Only opportunities!” 

 

Now, however, in early old age, I find myself, maybe, being won over to that way of thinking. 

Easier to feel hopeful when the sun is shining --

My change of mind and heart probably began before the death of my husband, although that enormous loss certainly made everything else I might have named a “problem” earlier in life seem trivial by comparison. As Jamie Raskin wrote of the death of his son by suicide at age 25, what was there to fear, now that the worst had already happened? And yet, even before that had come a cascade of crises, each to be met with calm and resolve, because no situation is helped by panic. Driving the Artist to the ER or calling for an ambulance, waiting out a surgery, living through days when he was “unresponsive” (hospital staff avoided using the word coma, until I finally asked if that’s what it was) were all situations that called on me to respond with something other than screaming hysteria. I had no choice but to rise to each difficult occasion and deal with it as it was. I could hardly welcome those situations as “opportunities,” and even now it’s a stretch to think of them that way, but they definitely demanded that I stretch in other ways. 

 

—But that might not have been the start, either, because over previous years I had gradually managed to leave behind, for the most part, my younger, reactive, self-dramatizing, often self-pitying and resentful self. Having a child and going back to work and navigating those paths simultaneously demanded that I deal with the world as a grownup, although growing up was for me, as it is for most of us (I think), a lifetime process. I should say it is, because I hope to keep growing as long as I live.

 

Growth. Rarely steady. Gradual but also subject to plateaus, to backslidings, to rushes ahead and then stalls. Sometimes to simple determined and dogged trudging forward.

On Wednesday, winter came back.

Living alone (with a dog, thank heaven!) has given me a fair share of opportunities for growth. Losing my billfold on a cross-country trip (which meant traveling without driver’s license and credit card); flat tire in Kansas on another trek; coming home to a failed septic pump that had to be replaced; having the farmhouse furnace give up the ghost (fortunately, that happened in the spring and not in the dead of winter)—all were unwelcome and unchosen situations that, nevertheless, had to met head-on. 

Scary time: when my puppy had a fever!

Another piece of the adult puzzle I had discovered back in the late 1980s was that taking action was empowering, all by itself, regardless of results. Does that sound obvious? The thing is, I didn’t have to take monumental action or even, all the time, action having anything to do with the unwanted situation. Sometimes it was as simple as pulling my head out from underneath the covers and sweeping dust bunnies out from underneath the bed. Looking back on my days of frenetic housekeeping in the face of situations beyond my control, I see that I was proving to myself that I was not helpless. I might have been only a pawn in their game, but in my own game I was the queen!

 

In the course of the past year, my fourth as a widow, more or less adjusted to that inescapable reality, I was helped not only by supportive friends and family and the companionship of my dog but also by the business I started back in 1993, little foreseeing then how vital it would be to my future life. My bookshop provides me with social life, morale support (and that is not a typo: I insist on morale, rather than moral for the real meaning of the phrase), and with daily literary and intellectual and, yes, casual, friendly conversations, as well as not only the excuse but the necessity of ordering new books on a regular basis.

 

I haven’t changed the subject.

 

Last year I ordered a book by Mel Robbins, Let Them, because I had gotten so much out of her various short video clips that I wanted to share her ideas with others. 

While reorganizing my spices at home on Tuesday this week (a dismal, rainy day), I listened to a conversation between Robbins and the “Daily Stoic” podcaster, Ryan Holiday, intrigued to hear him compare what Robbins calls her “Let Them theory” to stoicism, as both are about accepting what you cannot change. (Sounds like AA, doesn’t it?) Robbins takes pains to assure readers and listeners and viewers that she is not counseling the acceptance of disrespect or abuse. You don’t have to stay in a job forever with a disrespectful boss (although you might have to stay until you find something else), and you don’t have to stay in an abusive relationship with someone who puts no value on you, only on what he can get out of you. (Change pronouns as necessary for different situations.) What you are accepting is reality, the fact that you cannot change anyone but yourself, and that no one else is going to change because you would like them better a different way. 

 

First you do the “Let Them” step, and then, crucially, comes the “Let Me” step, where you decide what you will do in response to someone else's behavior that you don't like. It won’t be attempting to change that other person. You’ve already realized you have no power to do that. What you have power over is your response. In this conversation with Ryan Holiday, Robbins says you don’t even have to buy her book! She'll tell you what’s in it! What I have written here is my nutshell version.

The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius, the sixteenth emperor of Rome, who lived from 121 to 180 BCE, has been having a massive resurgence in popularity in 21^st-century America, and it’s not hard to understand the reasons for that. The long, gradual “fall” of the Roman Empire was already underway when the Stoic emperor (adopted, not born, into a family of aristocrats) came to power. War and conflict, the Antonine Plague and famine were some of the hardships in Rome during the 16th emperor's reign. He knew some tough times and had advice for getting through them.

 

As an experiment, I open the Meditations at random, and there on page 75 is a pithy bit of advice: 

 

Don’t align your thinking with that of a man who’s dishonoring you. Don’t think as he wants you to think, but see things as they truly are.

 

I close the book and open it once more, again at random: 

 

Perfection of character lies in this: to live each day as though it were your last, without turmoil, without listlessness, and without pretense. 

 

I can’t say I have ever studied Marcus Aurelius, and it’s been years since I read Epictetus, but clearly the times are nudging me in the direction of the Stoics, and so this week, in that spirit, and because each day could be my last, I have been focusing on telling people clearly how important they are to me, in ways large and small. As one of Northport’s beloved elders, Reverend Marshall Collins, told me once while we were still next-door business neighbors, “I’m giving you flowers while you’re alive.” (A good friend of his had recently died, and he was reflecting on all the flowers at the funeral.) Too often we think that surely people already know that we value them, but even our closest friends and family, secure in our love for them, get a boost from hearing appreciation put into words. I told our postmaster in Northport how much I love the post office and gave her a big hug! “Spread the word! These are strange times!” she urged, and I told her I do sing the praises of the USPS, often.

 

A last word today in closing: “Let Them” does not have to mean disengaging from politics. Don't waste your time and mental energy on conversations and activities that make you feel powerless, in politics or anywhere else, but please take a stand for kindness and justice and law (the real kind of law, with features like due process!), if you can find it within yourself to do so (here are some suggestions from Robert Reich), because—just as Rome was not built in a day, neither did it fall in a day.

 

Don’t act as if you were going to live for ten thousand years. Fate is hanging over your head. While you live—while you can—be a good man.

 

Man or woman, be a good person--while you can!

Gift from and memento of that good man,
Rev. Marshall Collins - 
Today's post is dedicated to him.

Midwinter Potluck

February 21, 2014

[I wrote this on Friday but waited until this (Saturday) morning to post it. Please note that today is Northport's Winter Carnival out at Braman Hill -- chili cook-off contest, cardboard sled races for the little ones, milk jug curling for the older crowd, etc., etc. A fine, wint'ry time will be had by all who attend.]

View out front window

No single large topic. It’s a wild, windy day, and my brain doesn’t want to settle down. Big news is that the ice caves are over! Open water, moving ice, very dangerous! Don’t go! Okay, that was my public service announcement, and now for the more mundane agenda:

(1)        I’ve been noticing something for several years now. When I was in grade school (and my grade’s spelling champion from third through sixth grade), we spelled anyone, anywhere, anyhow, anyway as single words; any time was two separate words, as was any more. We had no rule to tell us whether to separate the words or not, any more than French has a rule for whether a noun takes the feminine or masculine article. It was just something we had to learn, one instance a time. Increasingly these days, American-style English seems to jam together any two words of which the first word is any. I’m not going off on a tirade about this. It’s no big deal. Language evolves, and common phrases tend to associate more closely over time, baby sitter becoming baby-sitter becoming babysitter. In fact, copy editor became copy-editor became copyeditor, and all the young copyeditors operate on the jammed-together style. Well, yes, I can learn new tricks and make a point to do so from time to time. But change my ways on these spellings? Don’t look for me to be doing that any time soon. Old spelling champions’ habits die hard. -- And there the spelling program wants me to squash together die and hard, but diehard (a noun) isn’t what I mean: I’m talking about dying hard! Sheesh!

(2)        Here’s another recent linguistic phenomenon. The word so used to function almost exclusively as a transition word, an alternative to thus or therefore or in order to. Some years ago, I noticed someone using it apparently at random, not as a transition from one thought to a logical implication but simply to begin a sentence. She might be answering a question or merely introducing a topic. "So, we were doing such-and-such...." The word so here functioned basically as a verbal throat-clearing, with no more meaning than uh. Again, this is not a tirade I’m embarking on. No big deal. But I find it interesting to note how pervasive what I call "the throat-clearing so" has become. Listen for it the next time you hear someone being interviewed on radio. And beware (if you have not already succumbed), because it can be contagious, which is no doubt that’s why we’re hearing it everywhere these days. Not very important, and yet it strikes my ear as a kind of verbal tic, and I’m trying mightily to resist it.

(3)        Well, then there’s the academic who thinks we could get all perfectly well without commas, but I’m not about to get into that one. You can guess which side I’d be on, anyway. 

(4)        About leaving comments on this blog: More than one person has asked me in frustration if they must have a Google account to leave comments. “It keeps asking me for my Google account name!” My intrepid, persevering sister (one of them; actually, I have two, both of whom are intrepid and persevering) figured out why she was encountering that particular roadblock. It was because her browser default was set to Google, i.e., she was on Google (on?) while trying to leave a comment. If you don’t want a Google account, you can visit via another browser and post a comment as Anonymous. What was interesting to me was that people could be on Google and not know it. But, more importantly, now that I've given you the key, please go back a couple of days and leave a comment on the most recent book review post to be eligible for a book giveaway. A name will be chosen a week from today, Saturday, March 1 (weather permitting!).

The way it looks today

The LAW OFFICE sign will be gone from the front of the building by summer. We were shocked and saddened by the sudden, unexpected death of our lawyer neighbor, Bill. Moving forward, however, David was hard at work on this stormy Friday, painting the floor a brighter, cheerier color as he prepares to expand his gallery space right up to the windows onto Waukazoo Street. 

A can of paint, a bowl of chili from the Garage Bar & Grill -- let it snow, let it snow, let it snow! -- As if we had a choice, right?

When Metaphor Fails: What Counts as ‘Porn’?

In Metaphors We Live By, George Lakoff and Mark Johnson laid out a major philosophical position on language and meaning, namely, that spoken language (and so, by extension, written language) is fundamentally and inevitably metaphorical in nature, i.e., that all linguistic meaning is based on a metaphorical understanding of the world.

Let me start again. This time I’m going to use another color for a while to help get Lakoff and Johnson’s point across.

In Metaphors We Live By, George Lakoff and Mark Johnson laid out a major philosophical position on language and meaning, namely, that spoken language (and so, by extension, written language) is fundamentally and inevitably metaphorical in nature, that all linguistic meaning is based on a metaphorical understanding of the world.

Some would go even further with this than I have gone; others would object to going even this far. But you see the general direction of the argument? So let’s continue.

Our commonest of utterances, according to Lakoff and Johnson (who convinced me years ago), are shot through and through with metaphor. Johnson continued to develop the thesis in The Body in the Mind. Families of meanings cluster around our most basic embodied experiences, such as inside and outside, up and down, etc. Language without such a foundation is unimaginable – and there again is another metaphor, for we imagine in images, not necessarily visual but necessarily drawn from our physical senses of embodiment.

‘Metaphor’ itself is a metaphor, a meaning “carried over,” as oil is carried in a jar. And think of the contrast usually made between ‘figurative’ and ‘literal’ language. What does ‘literal’ mean? There are no letters in speech, are there? So is not ‘literal’ itself a metaphor, dependent on ‘figurative’ meaning?

The French philosopher Henri Bergson, my “main man” in philosophy, famously realized that we human beings can only make sense (how’s that for a metaphor: make sense) of time by casting it in spatial terms. American Sign Language, spoken languages, and arguments on free will (the last Bergson’s original focus) all bear this out. We spatialize time in order to see it conceptually, and in so doing, Bergson says, we cannot help misrepresenting it. Here is a quick and dirty recap of his dissolution of the free will argument: The determinist sees a fork in the road ahead and tells us that which road we will take when we get to the fork is fixed in advance. The free will advocate says no, when we get to the fork, we can choose. Bergson’s point is that there is no fork ahead, no road, no path at all. Where we postulate the forked road ahead, there is, as yet, nothing. Only as we live in and through time do we create the course our life takes. The future is what is not-yet, nonexistent.

The French language is rich in agricultural and pastoral metaphors, and so after a digression or background explanation, Bergson writes, “Let’s come back to our sheep” to signal that he is once again taking up the main thread of his argument. “Revenons à nos moutons.” English is also rich in agricultural expressions (“one rotten apple”; “a hard row to hoe”), as well as many from the English maritime past (“a loose cannon”; “down the hatch”). Like the more basic metaphors, the ones we don’t even notice, these figures of speech have over time become clichés, their origins seldom brought to mind, if not forgotten. What is a cliché to a native speaker, however, can be a charming and lively metaphor to one who comes to it in a language acquired later in life.

But I have not yet even introduced my sheep! Here goes--.

Recently I was taken to task on Facebook over a term that offends me in its newly widespread, indiscriminate application. Clearly, ‘indiscriminate’ is my interpretation of the new usages. (That is clear, isn’t it?) I am not pretending to take a god’s-eye view here. This is my perspective, my point of view, and no one is under any obligation to share it, but I would like to lay it out more thoroughly than I did on Facebook. 

The term is ‘porn,’ and I was accused of failing to appreciate the metaphor active in the uses that offend me. My friends were pushing me (whether this was their intention or not) to think carefully, and I did. 'Pornography,' the full, longer form, previously signaled a serious, controversial subject long debated in the realms of art, aesthetics, law, and civil society. The abbreviated term, by contrast, has come to signal an amusing, sophisticated dismissal of seriousness. Thus we are invited to exclaim and laugh over ‘food porn,’ ‘book porn,’ ‘bookshop porn,’ and ‘bookshelf porn.’ 

Why, aside from food, do so many of these have to do with books? Is it merely that my own life’s focus brings them to my notice that I have come to detest these phrases? Are there an equal number of uses in other parts of American life? Music? Sports?

“Revenons à nos moutons.”

As with widespread adoption not long ago of ‘ho,’ mostly by young people, calling so many things ‘porn’ not only not only sexualizes them but also trivializes sexuality. An enormous power is ignored and/or denied. Is the joking another version of the camel hiding its head in the sand? Do we fear the power of sexuality that much?

A friend of mine, doing research for a book she was writing, ran into a very dark reality behind a beautiful façade, a summer camp on an achingly beautiful island where, far from family and legal surveillance, young boys were sexually abused and exploited for the purposes of a child pornography ring. Nothing about the story was amusing.

At the other extreme, my friend Helen wrote for her blog a post on world-famous libraries, including photographs of surpassing, catch-your-breath loveliness. I am so grateful to Helen for not devaluating the great buildings and collections in her blog post by calling them ‘library porn’!

Human beings are capable of dreadful cruelty, shameful neglect, and unspeakable perversion, but our species has also added to the beauty and fullness of creation with works of art in every domain, along with institutions and systems of government, law, and science. At times we achieve magnificence with our works. Are we embarrassed to recognize the good? Are we as embarrassed to feel ourselves responding to beauty as we should be ashamed of being drawn to the gutter? Are we afraid of looking and sounding naive unless we shift instantly to a glib pretense of humor that levels all experience – no more horrors, no more inspiring heights?

‘Amazing’ and ‘awesome’ take human responses of awe and amazement and transfer them onto the world outside themselves. The mountain itself knows nothing of awe; it is we who feel awe in its presence. When a blueberry muffin or a pair of high heels is ‘awesome,’ what is left to say of the mountain? And when lovingly executed haute cuisine or the creation of an impressive book collection or a beautiful building is called ‘porn,’ what word can we use for the sexual exploitation of those children hidden away on the island?

Sexuality isn’t the only powerful human experience in the world. Words have power, too. On the other hand, we can bleed power out of words by abuse, misuse, or casual overuse. Do our lives matter? Does it matter how we treat one another? Do our efforts and achievements matter?

The world is not as flat as some pundits would have us believe. What have we to gain by relinquishing strong language with which to describe its beauties and its horrors. To anyone who loves words, this is an important question.

At home these winter evenings we have begun watching the television series The Newsroom” on DVD, and last night we watched an episode titled “Tragedy Porn.” In this episode the network in the story, attempting to gain back recently lost viewers, joins other networks in bypassing important, serious news during ratings week to focus on the most salacious, least important aspects of (1) the trial of a mother for killing her child; and (2) the ruin of a politician’s career for having posted sexually explicit photographs of himself on Twitter. In this instance, I thought the use of the word was perfectly appropriate: the network audiences were invited to wallow in cheap images and easy judgments without much if any concern for important issues or relevant facts. The network was pandering, the audience thrilling voyeuristically to cheap horrors. In this instance I buy ‘porn’ as a metaphor.

What do you think? Am I making a mountain out of a molehill? And, on a lighter note, how do you rate my use of the cliché in the foregoing sentence?

Loving the Present Participle

Snow sliding off the roof

Of course any reader or lover of books, like any writer, will also love words. That would seem to go without saying. (Obviously, it doesn't, judging from the number of writers who say it in interviews.) I’ve been thinking more specifically of late about different parts of speech and my feelings for them. Mathematicians sometimes admit to loving certain numbers. Is this strange? Oh, well! If I be strange, let me be unashamed!

Nouns. The fascination of naming. So many human beings begin speech with names. Not all—a few are phrase learners, and I wonder what other differences, if any, divide these two groups of learners—but most of us, when we uttered our first words, spoke names. Mama. Dada. Ball. Dog. My son spoke these words, adding towel, toast and other names quickly to the list. When we went to a theatre, and there was a fire scene in the movie, he identified it as “Hot!”  Was that for him an adjective or a noun? Obviously, it was neither, but it may well have been a name.

Verbs. One little boy I took care of for a while was a phrase-learner. “Throw it!” “Get it!” “Jump!” Verbs were his thing. He was all action!

Adjectives and Adverbs. Oh, the love affair young writers embark upon when first they learn to modify their nouns and verbs! How intoxicating the sense of power, adding detail upon detail to a world being recreated with words! Learning to say more with less requires reining in the power  so as not to let words run away with the writing, but adjectives and adverbs will always have a place, since the world itself is modified and modifying itself every moment.

I could go on here to say something about pronouns and about conjunctions, seemingly indispensable in the minds of English speakers, although some languages manage without them. If, for instance, a verb is already conjugated to “agree” with a particular pronoun, why is the pronoun needed? It is redundant. Americans love their pronouns, however, especially the first-person singular! And conjunctions. No one can ever study formal logic and see conjunctions naively again. Two statements can be made one after the other. Conjoining them adds nothing. (Either separate or conjoined, in either speaking or in writing, one must come before the other.) And it is such a shock to be told that and and but are logically equivalent! The choice between the two is more an editorial comment on a truth claim than part of a bare statement.

But I want to cut short my survey of parts of speech and get to my main point for today, which is that I have realized only recently (perhaps because it has been true only recently?) that I have an inordinate fondness for the present participle. I was looking back over titles I’d given various posts on this blog and found these words: racing; percolating; beginning, singing, ringing, resolving and hoping; reading; wrapping [up]; getting [back in touch]; remembering; etc., etc., etc. Even before making that discovery I had been reading and thinking about poetry, and it struck me that the present participle is vital to modern poetry, because it is vital to capturing a momentary impression. And suddenly I realized how much I love this part of speech!

Naming is irresistible. We human beings love to give names to objects, to places, to babies, and to each other. There are names we love to say, names that evoke memories or mystery. At the same time, names can lead us astray. When we know something’s name, we are tempted to think we know more about it than we do. When we give an abstract name, we think we have tidily boxed up an idea and can now put it, with its label, on its “proper” place on the idea shelf. Do you think you know who I am as a person or what I think on any particular topic because you have labeled me a “liberal”? Or because I have a “business”? Or because I’m a “philosopher”?

The world is not static; the world is complex and perpetually in flux. Nouns represent pieces of the world by oversimplifying. They take pieces out of context and freeze them in time. Most suspicion of language, when you read it closely, is suspicion of nouns.

No part of speech, however, is propaganda-proof. Verbs, like nouns, adjectives, and/or [!] conjunctions can slant a report one way or another. Did someone boast something or admit it? Did someone else retreat or flee? Did the candidate grin, smile, or smirk? So too the present participle can be used for otherwise unstated editorial purposes: “Puffing out his chest and tilting his chin upward, to a distant corner of the room, the uninvited guest replied....” Don’t you just want to kick him out yourself?

Winter sun shining

Still, I love this part of speech. The past tense tells us what is supposedly over and done with (as if anything ever is); the present tense holds forth an artificially static snapshot, a “state” of events; and the future tense makes claims that can be redeemed only when the future arrives. The present participle, by contrast, gives us a moment still in motion, as it’s sliding by, tumbling forward, and the word doesn’t try to hide or deny the movement, the slip-sliding.

“The nearer your destination, the more you’re slip-sliding away,” sang Paul Simon, and we heard him and sang along and said, “Yeah!” 

Poet Jim Harrison used a present participle for the title of his poetry collection, Saving Daylight. There is a poem with that title in the book, another called “Becoming,” another called “Adding It Up.”

Who can ever forget the first line of the poem that begins,

Turning and turning in the widening gyre

The falcon cannot hear the falconer...

-      William Butler Yeats, “The Second Coming”

Do you need more than that? Loving the present participle, I rest my case and relax in the weeds.

Clouds drifting, floating, sighing