Meditations #4

 "In all you do or say or think, recollect that at any time the power of withdrawal from life is in your own hands. If gods exist, you have nothing to fear in taking leave of mankind, for they will not let you come to harm. But if there are no gods, or if they have no concern with mortal affairs, what is life to me, in a world devoid of gods or devoid of Providence?"

Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book Two

As usual, Marcus is sharing some essential truth. Yesterday I was talking to my great friend SW and I was telling him how much his friendship means to me (why guys don't do more of this is mystifying; every time my oldest friend Jack and Dave and I take leave of each other, even virtually, we go out of our way to share that we love each other). Anyway, I was telling SW that our friendship, beyond providing so much joy over the last decade, has also kept me from going to really dark places over the last year and a half. It's not simply the pain and the inability to do something I dearly love, travel, but it's also the terrible realization of the years I've wasted based on a lie. If relationship end, they end, and if both sides were sincere, then no harm, no foul. Instead, so many years of my life - including relationships with other women that were rich and could have been even richer - were destroyed because of a person who lied to me, and who deliberately took advantage of my love for her and my belief in her. That's hard to get past, especially at sixty-one when I'm alone and can't see a time when that will change. Would I do something drastic? Probably not. But, truthfully, if the offer was, it could be over tomorrow, no pain or uncertainty, just a disappearance, a transition into the totality of all things - for big patches of the last year and a half the answer would have been a very simple and grateful yes. Because, Marcus is right, while we don't control many things, the "power of withdrawal from life" is in our own hands. And the notion of taking advantage of that power was something that lay at the heart of Stoicism. Of course, it's not simply the Stoics who struggled with this notion. We are told that the pre-Socratic Zeno, in his dotage, stumbled and shaking his fist, cried, "I come, I come, why dost thou call for me?" Then, at least according to legend, he ended his life. Any of my friends - and many of my students - can quote the classic Scudder lament, "praying for death's sweet release." Now, would I want this to be over because of pain, both physical and emotional, or because of vanity: that is, am I actually just angry with myself for foolishly taking the word of a woman who had never given me any reason to believe her? We do many stupid things for the cause of vanity, and I don't suppose that killing oneself should be one of them.