As my clock is winding down, I've been wondering what I should read these days. Nothing is required, and I’m not interested in making a list, as my desire is to reduce not increase my obligations. I’m asking this question because FOMO is messing with my tranquility—- the fear I may be missing out on essential knowledge that I must absorb to get ready, like Prospero, to 'round out my little life in a sleep.'
I’ve read many of the books in the Hebrew Bible, and most of the Christian Bible. There are bits and pieces from both I remember fondly, such as Psalm 23: "The Lord is my shepherd I shall not want. He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside the still waters." Stirring, beautiful lines we often hear at funerals. Psalms are not in my instructions, however, as I’m a non-believer. I may be a sheep, but am still searching for my shepherd.
I'm happy that the Jews escaped from Egypt, but I've never understood why that story, like many others in both Bibles, requires a magical explanation. There must have been rafts for hire on the west bank of the Suez, even in the 13th century BC when the Exodus is thought to have occurred. As for the Christian Bible, if you remove all seven of the miraculous events that Jesus is said to have performed, and leave us with his ethical teachings, I might be a convert.
The Divine Comedy, nearly biblical in scope, is another work I lack interest in re-visiting. (It's a comedy because it ends on a positive note---no one dies---and is written in the common, vernacular language of Italian, rather than Latin which was used for more serious compositions). I’ve read it in Italian and been dazzled by Dante's technical accomplishment: more than 14,000 lines, in intricately-rhymed three-line stanzas. As with the Bibles, there are some memorable bits, such as the last line of the Paradiso: “L'amor che move il sole e l'altre stelle." The love that moves the sun and the other stars. This is Dante writing about God's love that sustains the world. Again, as a non-believer, that poetry only takes me so far.
Antony and Cleopatra is one of my favorite plays, equal or better in my view than the others on the usual lists of Shakespeare's greatest tragedies. Unlike Romeo and Juliet, it's about mature love, how it starts, and why it ends—-here tragically because so unnecessary. This is Cleopatra speaking, as she watches Antony die before her, having been brought in after stabbing himself.
“Noblest of men, woo’t die?
Hast thou no care of me? Shall I abide
In this dull world, which in thy absence is
No better than a sty? O see, my women,
The crown o’ th’ Earth doth melt.—My lord!
⌜Antony dies.⌝
O, withered is the garland of the war;
The soldier’s pole is fall’n; young boys and girls
Are level now with men. The odds is gone,
And there is nothing left remarkable
Beneath the visiting moon."
She loved a man who’ll never be replaced: the odds is gone. And now that he’s gone, there’s nothing left remarkable in my world. That’s a formal, somewhat abstract statement of love, but it’s moved me every time I’ve read it. Language fit for a queen in mourning.
I’ve read King Lear at different ages, including a few years ago when it reminded me how stressful and unrewarding being an older parent can be at times. Kings have no better chance than the rest of us in keeping a happy family together over the long haul.
Marcus Aurelius (120-181 AD) wrote his memoir while serving as the emperor of Rome. I've had his Meditations on my bookshelf for at least twenty years. It's a short book, 170 pages, and I regret not having read it sooner. While he offers some standard stoical advice, to willingly accept what life throws in your path, that's not what's special about this book.
This emperor may be the original positive psychologist, showing us that our mental strenghts and emotional capabilities, and not our weaknesses or illnesses, are what we must focus on.
Book V, Section 5. "No one could ever accuse you of being quick-witted. All right, but there are plenty of other things you can't claim you 'haven't got in you.' Practice the virtues that you can show: honesty, gravity, endurance,...abstinence, patience, sincerity, moderation, seriousness, high-mindedness. Don't you see how much you have to offer---beyond excuses like 'can't.' And yet you still settle for less. Or is it some inborn condition that makes you whiny and grasping and obsequious, makes you complain and curry favor and show off and leaves you so turbulent inside? No, you could have broken free a long way back. And then you would have been only a little slow. 'Not so quick on the uptake.' And you need to work on that as well---that slowness. Not something to be ignored, let alone to prize."
This from Book IV, section 49a. "It's unfortunate that this has happened. No, it's fortunate that this has happened, and I've remained unharmed by it---not shattered by the present or frightened of the future. It could have happened to anyone. But not everyone would have remained unharmed by it.”
As you’re mulling over how apt an observation that is, this comes next in section 50.:
“A trite but effective tactic against the fear of death: think of the list of people who had to be pried away from life. What did they gain by dying old? In the end, they all sleep six feet under. [He lists some emperors]. They buried their contemporaries and were buried in turn. Our lifetime is so brief. And to live it out in these circumstances, among these people, in this body? Nothing to get excited about. Consider the abyss of time past, the infinite future."
Finally, this from Section 48, Book IV: "In short, know this: Human lives are brief and trivial. Yesterday a blob of semen, tomorrow embalming fluid, ash. To pass through this brief life as nature demands. To give it up without complaint. Like an olive that ripens and falls. Praising its mother, thanking the tree it grew on."
The emperor may be right that leading a very long life is ‘nothing to get excited about.’ I’ll get back to you on that one in fifteen years when I will turn (or turn over) at age eighty-eight. His Meditations are fully-stocked with bracing, unvarnished observations about how to live. It’s a good a piece of wisdom literature as I’ve ever read, all wheat and no chaff, and at fewer than two hundred pages, you’ll become wiser after just a few hours’ work.