Tag: aristotle

Heart Appreciation

I am still on my “serenity or die” project.  (Maybe it should be called my “last chance for peace project?”) In any case, rather than my usual course of examining those things that steal my serenity, I have tried to focus on those few moments when I do feel… serene (or something akin to it).  I got this idea from Marion Milner’s wonderful book, A Life of One’s Own, which I have written about before.  Milner uses journaling as an instructional path to serenity, a tool for examining what makes her happy in life.  One of the things that Milner says about her own search for happiness is that it somehow helped if she put her awareness in her heart rather than her head.  She calls it an internal gesture.  “I began to understand that my powers of perceiving could be altered, not by directly trying to look, or trying to listen, but by this special internal gesture.”  Sounds silly, but I encourage you to try this change in perspective.

In ancient times (Egyptian, Greek, Hebrew), people thought the seat of the soul was in the heart rather than the head – the Egyptians even threw out the useless brain during mummification, but left the heart as the departed would have need of it.  Hippocrates thought it was the brain where consciousness occurred, but Aristotle was sure that it was the heart.  Science agreed with Hippocrates.  Descartes even “identified” the soul in the pineal gland in the middle of the brain.  Yet, Pascal reminded us that “The heart has its reasons that reason knows not of.”

Of course, my husband’s recent heart attack has us thinking of that vital organ, of heart rates and blood pressure (which we measure every other day).  And surely the heart responds to our mental moods.  I recalled how, when I first was learning to meditate, an instructor had us hold the bulb of a “hand thermometer” to demonstrate how blood flow increased to the skin as heart rate decreased when we were deep within ourselves.  A calm mind helps the heart function.  Is the reverse also true?

Grace Paley wrote a good and true story about old age called “My Father Addresses Me on the Facts of Old Age,” in which the father gives the following advice:

Please sit down, he said. Be patient. The main thing is this—when you get up in the morning you must take your heart in your two hands. You must do this every morning.

That’s a metaphor, right?

Metaphor? No, no, you can do this. In the morning, do a few little exercises for the joints, not too much. Then put your hands like a cup over and under the heart. Under the breast. He said tactfully. It’s probably easier for a man. Then talk softly, don’t yell. Under your ribs, push a little. When you wake up, you must do this massage. I mean pat, stroke a little, don’t be ashamed. Very likely no one will be watching. Then you must talk to your heart.

Talk? What?

Say anything, but be respectful. Say—maybe say, Heart, little heart, beat softly but never forget your job, the blood. You can whisper also, Remember, remember.

Of course, talk of the heart leads me back to the mind/body connection, and the fact that I read over and over again that stress is a killer. “Stress can wreak havoc on your mind and body” says the Mayo Clinic.   It is not great for serenity either.  Stress can be caused by real challenges, but the body reacts just as strongly to the imagined ones – including all our catastrophic thinking.  I have spent a lot of useless time trying to change the nature of my thinking – but after reading how Milner cast her consciousness into her heart (metaphorically), I was ready to try circumventing the brain.  As a frequent victim of migraines, I don’t need to be reminded that the brain can be the enemy.

We all know that our brain cannot reason ourselves out of fear.  Camus told us that, in the eyes of reason, being alive is an absurd project. Reason does not help.  (And for that reason, AI probably isn’t going to help either.)  Hard as my brain has tried, it has been unable to think itself into serenity. Milner’s trick of casting our awareness into the heart is one way to side-step the mind and its Gestapo tactics.  Casting your awareness into another part of your body provides a new focus.  My heart is the part of the body that works best for me in that regard.  It is not a permanent solution, but it is a motivating foretaste of what I am after.

Maybe it’s time to give our head a rest.  “When you get up in the morning you need to take your heart into your two hands.”  And once you have done that, cast your mind into your heart.  It is easier than you think.

For a story about leading with the heart, you might try “The More Loving One.”

 

The Good Life in Old Age

Unlike the obscure and nitpicking scholastics of our time, classical philosophers spent more of their efforts in trying to define what makes a good life. Eudaimonia is a Greek word, meaning well-being, or, perhaps, something akin to personal happiness.  These earlier philosophers were interested in discovering and sharing the best ways to live, and how to hold those standards up against the reality of our own existence.  What could be more important?  And they were not just talking to other academics; they knew everyone was facing this challenge.  I have been thinking about these guys (and unfortunately, they are all guys) lately in regard to old age.  What makes a good old age?

The modern answer would seem to be: enough money to live and travel, enough energy to party and play pickleball, and children who are self-sufficient but ready to take care of us when we need them.  Our independence is of the greatest importance – we don’t want to be alone but we don’t want anyone else telling us what to do. There is nothing wrong with any of these things, but having experienced the personal trauma of moving this year and the collective trauma of what is going on with the economy and the government, I am grasping for something a little less material, a little more stable than finances, climate or personal health.

And there is some agreement among the philosophers about the good life.  Aristotle says that the exercise of our rationality and virtue will lead us to a good life.  So does Spinoza.  What would this look like in old age?  What would it mean to live rationally and virtuously in old age?

The Stoics (and I am thinking mainly of Epictetus) say that in old age, or at any time, to be happy, to live a good life, is to free ourselves from expectations:

The only way to a happy life (keep this rule at hand morning, noon, and night) is to stand aloof from things that lie outside the sphere of choice, to regard nothing as your own, and to surrender everything to the deity and fortune… and to devote yourself to one thing only, that which is your own and free from all hindrances.  (from The Discourses of Epictetus)

This is akin to the Buddhist exhortation not to be attached to things: to be attentive but not reliant, to do the right thing without concern for the consequences.  This is advice that we could all use, but probably a lesson we all should have learned by now.  If you haven’t experienced the disappointments of the plans of mice and men by now, you are fortunate indeed.  Nevertheless, true detachment is hard to come by.  And in old age, things we are attached to fall away at an alarming rate, so we had better be good at renunciation.

Then there is the matter of remorse, regret and atonement in old age.  (I have written about this previously in “Old Karma, Instant Karma.”)  Cicero warns us that the mistakes of our youth will follow us into old age.  Yes, we all know that.  Spinoza gives the best advice in this regard (as in most regards): “Repentance is not a virtue, or does not arise from reason; instead, he who repents what he has done is twice wretched, or lacking in power.”  “Twice wretched” reminds me of Nietzsche’s caution that remorse was like “adding to the first act of stupidity a second.” The Buddha calls remorse “the second arrow.”  Something outside us wounds us the first time; our remorse keeps opening the wound.  Some religions have rites and rituals to help us to atone and erase. Again, if you have reached old age without remorse, you are blessed.

So, we should be rational, ethical, and at peace with our past.  What does this mean?  Cicero is very specific about a good old age: “the tranquil and serene evening of a life spent in peaceful, blameless, enlightened pursuits.”  I agree with the aim, but the methodology often eludes me.  Each of us can only define it for ourselves. We must try; we must work at it.  As Spinoza says at the end of the Ethics:

If the way I have shown to lead to these things [peace of mind] seems very hard, still, it can be found.  And of course, what is found so rarely must be hard.  For if salvation [the ethical and intellectual state of freedom] were at hand, and could be found without great effort, how could nearly everyone neglect it?  But all things excellent are as difficult as they are rare.

 I recently read Florida Scott-Maxwell’s memoir of old age (recommended), written when she was in her 80s and in a nursing home:

I want to tell people approaching and perhaps fearing age that it is a time of discovery.  If they say, “Of what?” I can only answer “We must find out for ourselves, otherwise it won’t be discovery.”

In these times when the stock market is being undermined, when mores are changing, and the known is disappearing into the maw of the suspect, what better time for an internal “excellent adventure.”  Spinoza pursued this question while he was ostracized from his community and dying of spoiled lungs.  Florida Scott-Maxwell did it in a nursing home.  Epictetus did it as a slave.  We should be able to do this. I can give you no more than encouragement and reading lists (more on that in another blog).

You won’t hear the answers from Cicero or Epictetus or Spinoza or Aristotle.  Or me. That would be too easy.  But you might hear some of the right questions to ask yourself.

On a lighter note, I long ago drafted a story (“It’s a Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood”) on the use of music to improve our mood – one way to a good life, at least in the moment. It’s something I pay attention to, and I know exactly what old songs will temporarily soothe my beast.  But, as the story points out, it is a band-aid and not a remedy.  The remedy would seem to be much harder.