Book 4, Letter 21, To Cicero, on Happiness

Dear Cicero,

This may be my last letter for some time. Everything has its beginning and its end, and now, having finished reading your Tusculan Disputations, I feel that I must leave you in your tomb for a while. I still have your books on the Republic, and the Laws to read, as well as your speeches, and your books on oratory, but I feel that for a time, I must pause in writing these letters to you, and instead focus my attentions on the needs of the living for a time. I will probably write to you again. Who am I kidding, I will definitely write again.

Today I wanted to talk to you about something written by our mutual friend, Plato. For me, the study of philosophy is primarily concerned with the pursuit of happiness. I feel this way because so often, happiness is something that I pursue, but fail to catch, and many days are wasted in the weariness of the pursuit, and in my failure to live up to my own expectations.

So it was, in the fifth book of your Tusculan Disputations, that I find this quote from Plato, taken from Menexenus 247e:

The man who is entirely self-sufficient as regards all the necessary ingredients for leading a happy life, so that these do no in any way depend on other people's good or bad luck or dangle at the uncertain mercy of someone else's fortune – he is the person who has found the right way to live. He has done so by making himself an exemplar of moderation, courage and wisdom. Such a man, as his possessions wax and wane and his children are born and die, will obediently submit to the ancient maxim which directs him to avoid extremes either of joy or grief: for he will always limit his hopes to the things his own unaided efforts can achieve.

I have been reading a modern Japanese author, Fumitage Koga, and in his book The courage to be disliked, he explores the ideas of Alfred Adler, through a Platonic style dialogue with Ichiro Kishimi, and expounds upon the notion of The separation of Tasks, and the idea that all happiness is based upon interpersonal relationships. Certainly, a great majority of my own happiness and despair stems from the joys and failures of my relationships. I am tied to the happiness of my family as a sailor who cannot swim is bound to his ship, and I find my whole life swells and pitches with their favours and fortunes. My own errors in behaviour have been the cause of terrible and prolonged unhappiness, and the disrupting influence of this upon my relationships has given me cause to abandon sound reason, and to rely upon so many externals to provide for my happiness. I have failed to apply myself adequately to the task of my own happiness and self understanding.

My own happiness has long seemed to be beyond my ability to achieve, burdened as I am by shame, guilt and remorse – all forms of grief I suppose, as I stumble from injury to insult, driven half mad by the certain belief that I am rotten to the core, and capable of doing no good in the world. Many days I wake with the mantra in my mind – it doesn't matter what I think, I'm wrong. Many evenings I go to bed reminding myself that I am stupid, and that I am responsible for all the calamities of my life, calamities born of my stupidity, and my inability to accept the world as it truly is.

So I read your books, Cicero; On Duties, On Friendship, on the Nature of the Gods, and finally, the last book of your Tusculan Disputations: Whether virtue alone be sufficient for a happy life, but I find in study of this kind, only a continued confusion, as opinion heaps upon opinion, and my mind spins dizzily with conflicting ideas.

However, the book by Fumitage Koga, has been offering me some new pathways to explore, in particular, regarding the way in which I relate to traumatic experiences, and the responsibility I must take on to provide for my own happiness. This brings me back to the Plato quote, for he will always limit his hopes to the things his own unaided efforts can achieve. A great deal of my daily stress and anxiety stems from being concerned with the outcome of events beyond my control, including (but not limited to) my ability to make others happy. Having brought so much unhappiness into the world, I live in a very tense way, afraid to act out of fear that I will cause further unhappiness through my ignorant actions. I have resisted my own happiness, convinced that I do not deserve to feel good about myself, and, unable to feel that my actions have received adequate punishment, I am incapable of feeling redeemed or forgiven for my mistakes.

I hang onto every bad deed, reminding myself daily of my mistakes, knowing that to forget them or to forgive myself, is to open myself to repeating the same sins. I know that this method of self flagellation is counter-productive, but lifelong habits are hard to break.

Oh Cicero, I am sounding like my life is full of complaints and that I am immune to good advice, (and sometimes I do feel that way), but I acknowledge that these troubles are but a portion of my life, which is also crowded with joys and triumphs. As usual, you have something to say that strikes to the heart of the matter for me:

Tusculan Disputations

Book IV (On other perturbations of the mind) , XXXVII

Where, then, are they who say that anger has its use? Can madness be of any use? But still, it is natural. Can anything be natural that is against reason? Or how is it, if anger is natural, that one person is more inclined to anger than another? Or that lust of revenge should cease before it has revenged itself? Or that any one should repent of what he had done in a passion? (…) Now who that is acquainted with these instances can doubt that this motion of the mind is altogether in opinion and voluntary? For who can doubt that disorders of the mind, such as covetousness and a desire of glory, arise from a great estimation of those things by which the mind is disordered? From whence we may understand that every perturbation of the mind is founded in opinion. And if boldness – that is to say a firm assurance of mind - is a kind of knowledge and serious opinion not hastily taken up, then diffidence is a fear of an expected and impending evil; and if hope is an expectation of good, fear must, of course, be an expectation of evil. Thus fear and other perturbations are evils. Therefore as constancy proceeds from knowledge, so does perturbation from error.

So, Cicero, it is fear of myself, and a desire for revenge upon myself for my own misdeeds that has driven me to a kind of madness; a madness that I have long believed to be of great use but now I see is just another of the many great errors of my unreasoned belief in my own inherent vice. My own voluntary opinions have driven me past the edge of self harm, and now, dwelling in the dark valley of vacillating diffidence, I fear myself. I trust not in my own good intentions, I trust not in my own opinions, memories or senses, but tremble daily in fear of another eruption of disputes, within and without.

Where, Cicero, must I go to seek this boldness, this firm assurance of mind, this constancy of which you speak?

Of course, I must seek it in the only place it could possibly dwell.

In myself.

Thank you Cicero, for the two and a half years of our correspondence. I will continue to read your works, adhering to my promise to read everything you have written, but for the remainder of the Summer, I will keep still my pen, and work on myself.

With Gratitude, and Respect.

Morgan.

PS. I have now read the full text of Plato's Menexenus, and I have to ask, do you find Plato as funny as I do? I feel like I'm swimming through layers of satire and Athenian cultural tropes. It's hard to say for sure if Plato is telling a huge political joke. The translator of the work suggests that it is meant to be a scathing parody of conservative Athenian attitudes, and I feel like he is right, but I just don't know for sure If I'm meant to be laughing, crying, or cheering.

Perhaps that's the point?

PPS. I have just read your speech in support of Pompey's appointment to be commander of the Mithridatic War. I admit I've never understood your admiration and adoration for Pompey, but now that I have read this speech, I can see him better from your perspective. The speech actually explains a lot about the political and military history, customs and beliefs, in Rome at the time.

PPPS. I have just read the first two speeches against Catiline. WOW! Hot stuff. There are some amazing phrases and rather revealing hate-speech in these. Fascinating to see your society through the language you use in a public speech, and how different your manner of expression when addressing the public assembly, or the Senate. Even small passages of text loom large for what they illuminate. I'm quite excited to finally be reading your speeches.

I'll write again in Autumn.

Always grateful, ever thankful,

Morgan.

 

(Also, a few pictures, from my world to yours...)

Book 4, Letter 20 To Dad: Lessons in failure

 

Dear Dad,

I have these things to comfort me. Tonight I am wearing your brown cap and your red woollen poncho. I am sitting in your wooden rocking chair, I am drinking your whiskey and I am reading Plutarch. I wear your rings on a chain around my neck. These things are like magic items, and though I have not felt visibly grieved at your passing, I find myself slumping at odd moments, leaning against the wall or doorway, as if my strength has suddenly slipped from me. I sense your absence, and I feel that part of me that relied upon you, that relied upon your strength...

Your strength is my strength now.

You are nowhere, but you are in me.

The good and the bad.

Your strength and your weakness.

Your confidence and your doubt.

I move with a matured slowness and certainty. My music sounds richer, warmer. Old songs are new again in my hands. New poems pour through me, and new stories. My beard is growing, flecked with white, and I am proud of these snowflakes upon the mountain of my face. Our face.

It doesn't feel like loss, this grief is more like growth. Though I cry, though I collapse, though I am drinking more than I should and feeling both lost and adventurous, I rise each day, myself, only more so.

But...

I am reminded often, that all your kindness towards me, is mirrored black in your hurtfulness towards others. I was the lucky one, to know you as I did, as your son. You raised me to stand up to you, and you rewarded me when I did. This was not the case with others. I am sorry for them, that you felt the need to control them, to dominate, to terrify and hurt, when you gave me so much encouragement.

You who slew a tyrant, became a tyrant, and I loved you.

I love you still.

A man's legacy lives on in the hearts of those who knew him, and there is a shadow now spilling out through the tears of your children. But I will not paint your portrait black with their hurt, and I will not paint it white with my admiration. I only want to draw upon the truth, and with my artful words, to tell the world who you were.

I have been reading On Liberty, by John Stewart Mill. I found it on your bookshelf, and today I read this, which I must share with you.

Mankind can hardly be too often reminded that there was once a man named Socrates, between whom and the legal authorities and public opinion of his time there took place a memorable collision. Born in an age and country abounding in individual greatness, this man has been handed down to us by those who best knew both him and the age as the most virtuous man in it ; while we know him as the head and prototype of all subsequent teachers of virtue, the source equally of the lofty inspiration of Plato and the judicious utilitarianism of Aristotle, “i maestri di color che sanno,” the two headsprings of ethical as of all other philosophy. This acknowledged master of all the eminent thinkers who have since lived – whose fame, still growing after more than two thousand years, all but outweighs the whole remainder of the names which make his native city illustrious – was put to death by his countrymen, after a judicial conviction, for impiety and imorality. Impiety, in denying the gods recognised by the State ; indeed, his accuser asserted that he believed in no gods at all. Immorality, in being, by his doctrines and instructions, a “corrupter of youth.” Of these charges the tribunal, there is every ground for believing, honestly found him guilty, and condemned the man who probably of all then born had deserved the best of mankind to be put to death as a criminal.

Though we strive to be good men, we always fall short of our idealistic goals. You are the reason I know about Socrates, and though I strive to be a virtuous man, life is never shy in offering lessons in failure.

I have so much I still want to say to you Dad, and now I have all eternity to say it. I will see you under another sunrise.

With gratitude, respect and above all, love,

Your son, Morgan.

Book 4, Letter 19, part 2 of 2, to Cicero, discussing the disputations, on the subject of death and happiness

 

So Cicero, you claim that all that remained was to contend with fortune? Is there something in your words that can summarise this book and your purpose in writing it?

But death truly is then met with the greatest tranquillity when the dying man can comfort himself with his own praise.

Cicero, you must have sensed that your death was at hand. Mark Antony was not a man to be insulted or opposed without blood being shed. You had divorced your wife, re-married, divorced again, lost your treasured daughter and her baby in childbirth. You had lost your beloved Republic along with so many of your friends, all dead and buried in a seemingly endless civil war, what more was there for you but to comfort your dying pillow with your own praise?

 

Ciero's Tomb

I think of course about my own Father, and of his final days, and what comfort he found in the company of his son and grandson, and in the films we watched, and in the food we shared, and in the stories we told. My father in so many ways is like you Cicero, worthy of both praise and censure, and making a summary of a person's life, measuring the balance of their heart against the weight of a feather, is an impossible task for a mortal. That conversation is a private concern between you and Hades, so to speak.

When I stood with my sister and wrapped my father's body in a white burial shroud, placing two gold pennies over his eyes to pay his way into the afterlife, I felt the weight of my heart, and the gravity of our actions.

When I wrote his eulogy, I knew a moment of happiness to be praising him, and to name his demons and his sins, along with his triumphs and great deeds. I knew happiness, to see the end of all his problems, knowing, as you put it Cicero, that either the dead are insensible to the pains of mortal life, and thus must be happy, or the dead are insensible even to their own existence, in which place they are also, insensible to pain. My father suffered in his last years, his body wracked with pain and seizures and his eyes darkening into blindness, but he suffered through it smiling.

Smiling, with his shrine to depression upon the bookshelf. His books on mythology lined up behind all his black dog figurines.

Cerberus, lord over them all.

Cicero, Hell is not in the afterlife, it is now. It is everywhere. It burns in our hearts and minds and makes ill our good intentions. It tears down our good works and breaks up our great loves and all the while it seems to laugh at us. God is envious of human prosperity and likes to trouble us; or perhaps it also speaks truth to say that we like to trouble ourselves.

We keep our black dogs hungry and howling and we chain ourselves to their post; growing thinner every year we let silence become our legacy, as, smothered in fear, we do not speak the words that could grant us that tranquillity promised only to the dead. Diverted from the path of virtue, we suffer alone alone alone.

What customs could have compelled me to speak with my father more about these black dogs we both keep? What opinions kept us from speaking as openly as we could? What Hyrkanian dogs tore at us both while we sat in the half shade of our half truths, only half revealing ourselves, scared of love, scared of the dogs. I can feel the bright light of all my secrets shining out through the cracks in my facade, and I open my face, almost ready to laugh. Finally ready to cry.

I am a storyteller, I tell stories, and if, by the good grace of fortune, I sometimes manage to speak the truth as well, then I hope that one day, when my time is done, I might be counted among the happy.

Or at least,

the lucky.

Today, Cicero, I feel lucky to have known you.

With gratitude and respect,

Morgan.