"LIFE IS LONG IF YOU KNOW HOW TO USE IT," SENECA

On the Shortness of Life by Seneca (4BC-65AD), the Roman Stoic, is a brief work that is so full of ideas that are current.  How can it be that someone from the 1st century can tap into our needs today?  It speaks to the universality of everything human I think.  It's like when I happen to check audience stats and see that someone in Andorra has looked at this blog, or someone in Czechia, the Netherlands, Portugal, or the UK. We must all have universal interests and thoughts.  We're not so different from one another, maybe not at all different from one another.  That may be true across time as well, across centuries, not just across the globe.  

Some things we are all drawn to.  The sea is one. -- Not today exactly, as we in North Carolina watch Hurricane Florence make land fall and flood our rivers, as our causeways are closed and we have evacuated with our re-entry passes in hand.  As we wait to either lose power or for its return and the branches crack and the trees thud.  No not today.  But most days.  Most days we all enjoy the tides, the mystery of the forests, the views from our mountains, the healthy endurance that nature requires.  We know that going out is the same as going in.  

So as we have the day off and I have a momentary return of power, I am reading Seneca.  How apt to read a Stoic philosopher during the silences and surges of a storm.  Let's begin with the quote,  

"Life is Long if You Know How to Use It."  

Seneca is a chider in this essay, a bit of a scold.  But what he says makes sense to me.  Think about these two statements:

"They lose the day in expectation of the night, and the night in fear of the dawn." 

 "But putting things off is the biggest waste of life:  it snatches away each day as it comes, and denies us the present by promising the future.  The greatest obstacle to living is expectancy, which hangs upon tomorrow and loses today."

Or this one, 

People are frugal in guarding their personal property; but as soon as it comes to squandering time they are most wasteful of the one thing in which it is right to be stingy." 

I am guilty of all these things, I know that.  Losing a day or night to agitation when my worries have gotten the better of me.  Putting off something I want to do.  Allowing screen time to suck away the hours. Neglecting the joy of being outdoors.    

Or this  worst--letting memories of a bad day color what could be a good day. Or a past hurt destroy the present. I like the way Seneca addresses this.  Focusing on the bad he says is like punishing ourselves for our misfortune, increasing our ills instead of lessening them.  Isn't the original loss or hurt punishment enough, he asks.  Lingering in our suffering, coddling it with attention, is like pleading for more lashes.  If that profited us, he writes, if a night spent in sorrow instead of sleep brought relief, that would be one thing.  But it doesn't.  

I'm not suggesting we all read Seneca's Consolations. Or become Stoics. But I do like it that a literary form that dates from the 5th century BC can reach us today. That the need for consolations from life's ills was the same then as now. That part of Seneca's philosophy was that contentment could be reached through simple living, reason and social equality.  Especially the contentment through simple living part.  

So I've signed up for a 14-week MBSR (Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction)  course at the Center for Integrative Medicine at Duke University Medical Center.  Something I want to do that I'm not putting off!  It's part mindfulness (staying in the present non-judgmentally), part meditation and part Yoga.  Maybe a bit of Roman stoicism, I'll find out.  No pleading for more lashes in this course I bet!  I'm ready to put in the work.  

With thanksgiving for my long life, Nina Naomi 





 

  

THE NOWNESS OF LIFE

I was thinking about this--how much our life is more like a river than the top of the mountain.  How seldom we can say, "OK that's done."  Carly Simon has a beautiful ballad she wrote after her mother died.  The chorus is

I'll wait for you no more like a daughter,

That part of our life together is over

But I will wait for you forever

Like a river...

The first three lines are just a small range of even notes until her voice rises and soars on the word "forever," drawing it up, out and down.  It sounds like falls in a river.  I love the song, maybe now more than ever since my mother is gone.  

When we climb the mountains in our life, we never reach the top.  They're rugged and hard but they're beautiful and we love climbing.  We see wonderful views along the way and find treasures, but we also love coming back down.  Then we can follow the river, float, swim, survive its currents and climb another day if we want.  These are good choices.  They last. 

So what are these things that are never over, the tops we don't reach?  You know them.  Forgiveness is one, ourselves or others.  That takes forever, sung with our own voices rising and lingering on the word.  Understanding our children is another.  Or our partner.  Or even ourselves--maybe especially ourselves.  We never say, "OK that's done!"  

Making a home is another.  That's why we feather our nests over and over.  We add a blanket or a new plant.  We rearrange our collections.  We paint a room, plump the pillows, or even move and start over.  We don't want our homes to be finished.  We aren't, why should they be?

Enjoying nature is another one.  Yesterday I read an article called "In Life's Last Moments, Open a Window," by Dr. Rachel Clarke.  She works in palliative care in Britain. She says that even (or maybe especially) the dying want the experience of nature.  When the doors and windows of their rooms are opened their spirits lift, they're more peaceful, accepting and calm.  They want the sights and sounds of birds, of leaves rustling, and the feel of the breeze.  The idea seems to be that in our last days the trivial and the important merge.  Perhaps we need nature to remind us that we are part of its cycle.  She quotes a writer who said about his ending, "The nowness of everything is absolutely wondrous."  I think being on a river or climbing, pausing, climbing, pausing are wondrously in the now. 

Dr. Clarke says that people often imagine a hospice to be only about the dismalness of  death.  But it isn't, she says.  It's about "the best bits of living.  Nowness is everywhere. Nature provides it."  We want this all the time, don't we, the best bits of living, nowness everywhere, nature providing?  I'm going to do my best to put myself in a place where this can be true for me.  A place in my river or on my mountain side. 
                                   

LET YOURSELF GO

Summer just opens the door and lets you out. 

This is a quote by Deb Caletti (b. 1963), young adult author.  I like it.  But actually, it can apply to any season.  Spring certainly, the season of rebirth.  Fall, which is also new beginnings, crisp air, the school year, the end of a hodge-podge summer schedule.  Even Winter with the cleanliness of new fallen snow and the brightness of Christmas decorations.  I figure just about any time is a good time to take off, to soar.  I am thinking partly about the times when we can be who nobody thinks we are.  

When we're alone of course.  We can dance around the house, sing as loud as we want, turn the music up, clean like a dervish or let things go, cry if we need to or practice scream therapy, sleep with the covers over our head or stay up all night. . . .   But also when we're on vacation, whatever time of year.  We won't run into our high school teacher at the super market, or an old friend (or enemy) grabbing coffee.  On vacation, especially if alone, we can wear hats, red lipstick, chat with strangers, do something outrageous, create a persona.  If a friend wants to do this with us, all the better.  

It's fun to be someone different.  I rented my husband and me a place in the mountains, just for a couple of nights.  At home we are straight-laced grandparents.   On a mini-break we added spa treatments, late-night oysters, mountain views, hair-pin curves.  Oh my goodness.  Just 3 hours from home but so good to be someone else. 

You parents and grandparents, family members, care-taking children, teachers, accountants, lawyers, bosses, have you done this?  Gotten away for a night?  Gotten to be whomever you want?  Students can do this when they go away to college.  A chance to change who they were in high school.  We can do it in a new job or new city.  A do-over.  It's downright liberating.  

I don't mean a break from our values.  Or what we believe in or who we trust or who we would lay down our life for.   Just a chance to lighten the load, to let ourselves go.  To be someone else for awhile or forever.  Do you have a weekend alone or away?  Can you plan something? Why not open the door and let yourself out?  I'm looking for a time right now.