Intro & Preface & Contents
Previous: Autumn XIII. Stoics part 2
I have had one of my savage headaches. For a day and a night I was in blind torment. Have at it, now, with the stoic remedy. Sickness of the body is no evil. With a little resolution and considering it as a natural issue of certain natural processes, pain may well be borne. One’s solace is, to remember that it cannot affect the soul, which partakes of the eternal nature . This body is but as “the clothing, or the cottage, of the mind.” Let flesh be racked; I, the very I, will stand apart, lord of myself.
Meanwhile, memory, reason, every faculty of my intellectual part, is being whelmed in muddy oblivion. Is the soul something other than the mind? If so, I have lost all consciousness of its existence. For me, mind and soul are one, and, as I am too feelingly reminded, that element of my being is here, where the brain throbs and anguishes. A little more of such suffering, and I were myself no longer; the body representing me would gesticulate and rave, but I should know nothing of its motives, its fantasies. The very I, it is too plain, consists but with a certain balance of my physical elements, which we call health. Even in the light beginnings of my headache, I was already not myself; my thoughts followed no normal course, and I was aware of the abnormality. A few hours later, I was but a walking disease; my mind -- if one could use the word -- had become a barrel-organ, grinding in endless repetition a bar or two of idle music. [That is an excellent description of being ill.]
What trust shall I repose in the soul that serves me thus? Just as much, one would say, as in the senses, through which I know all that I can know of the world in which I live, and which, for all I can tell, may deceive me even more grossly in their common use than they do on certain occasions where I have power to test them; just as much, and no more -- if I am right in concluding that mind and soul are merely subtle functions of body. If I chance to become deranged in certain parts of my physical mechanism, I shall straightway be deranged in my wits; and behold that Something in me which “partakes of the eternal” prompting me to pranks which savour little of the infinite wisdom. Even in its normal condition (if I can determine what that is) my mind is obviously the slave of trivial accidents; I eat something that disagrees with me, and of a sudden the whole aspect of life is changed; this impulse has lost its force, and another which before I should not for a moment have entertained, is all-powerful over me. In short, I know just as little about myself as I do about the Eternal Essence, and I have a haunting suspicion that I may be a mere automaton, my every thought and act due to some power which uses and deceives me.
Why am I meditating thus, instead of enjoying the life of the natural man, at peace with himself and the world, as I was a day or two ago? Merely, it is evident, because my health has suffered a temporary disorder. It has passed; I have thought enough about the unthinkable; I feel my quiet returning. Is it any merit of mine that I begin to be in health once more? Could I, by any effort of the will, have shunned this pitfall?
Alpha.
“...I have a haunting suspicion that I may be a mere automaton, my every thought and act due to some power which uses and deceives me.” This could have been part of the pitch for the movie The Matrix.
The character Settembrini in The Magic Mountain insists that we, the healthy, over estimate the suffering of the sick, that their very illness shapes and inures them to its ravages. It is like our imagining what it must be like to run a marathon, but ignoring all the preparatory training the actual runners have already gone through. I suspect there is some truth in this, in fact it must be true as nearly every account I read of someone undergoing the Ordeal of the Oncologists -- bone marrow transplants being a prime example of this -- make me think, “Nope! I would much rather die, thank you.” As with accounts of more straightforward torture, one supposes that once you enter that world your senses must somehow adjust to the new norm. But training or no, a marathon is still an ordeal I would just as soon avoid.
I feel the same way about dying -- not sudden death, but the gradual slipping away from life. I’ve always preferred the idea of a sudden death -- in my sleep would be perfect -- but now I’m not so sure. I suspect that’s one ordeal that might be worth the trouble, just as a preparatory experience, but I’m still not sure I have the courage for it. Often, I’ve noticed, life doesn’t give you an option in this matter, and I may be OK with that.
Acorns, trees, and Feng Shui.
Some of my favorite writers have played with the similarity between children and parents, or with traits running in families. In Mermaids (possibly the best combination of novel and movie ever) Patty Dann has the judgmental teenage daughter of the randy mother finding she’s just as randy herself, while the younger daughter, whose father was an Olympic class swimmer, is practically a fish. In Anne Tyler's The Accidental Tourist, the entire Leary bloodline is subject to getting lost in the city where they’ve lived all their lives.
The getting lost trait I do believe. I once read about a family where you could predict, by studying the family tree, who could understand certain mathematical concepts and who couldn’t. That there is a genetic component to such things is not really surprising, and I suspect spacial orientation and the ability to read maps and similar abilities also probably have a genetic component. There are probably also musical families. But inheritance isn’t perfectly straightforward either, I’m sure even a musical family occasionally produces a child who is tone deaf.
You have to wonder if religious beliefs don't also have a genetic component. That the shared underlying nature of the most common monotheistic faiths, for example, might tell you something about the people native to the part of the world where these faiths originated. That other religious ideas might seem more or less natural for people of other ethnic backgrounds. The idea that “all men are created equal” is fine for defining their status under law, but is delusional when considering the capabilities of those men and women.
Unfortunately, this is something that would be interesting to know more about but that no one in their right mind would actually research for fear of offending either groups or individuals. Many years ago I came up with the concept of Personnel Feng Shui -- the art of balancing people in a workplace. Nothing is more destructive to a work or project environment than the wrong mix of personalities, yet there is really no professional to call in to address or to help avoid these problems. The closest thing I can think of to what I have in mind are specialists in jury selection, but their agendas are rather different.
A practitioner of Personnel Feng Shui would make sure that everyone was qualified and happy in their particular roles, and that there were no toxic personalities -- or personalities that interact negatively. It would be both economically valuable and satisfying work.
Next: Autumn XV. Blackberries.
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