on friends and death

while on this death kick, i remembered that letter LXIII (63) from seneca, on grief for lost friends, addressed the topic of friends and grief. it had some pretty great insights as they related to death. i think i’ll just put down each quote and then my little reflection after each one.

making the most of friends while they’re still alive​​

So, my dear Lucilius, behave in keeping with your usual fair-mindedness and stop misinterpreting the kindness of fortune. She has given as well as taken away. Let us therefore go all out to make the most of friends, since no one can tell how long we shall have the opportunity. Let us just think how often we leave them behind when we are setting out on some long journey or other, or how often we fail to seem them when we are staying in the same area, and we shall realize that we have lost all too much time while they are till alive.

this is the reason i hug people so fiercely. every time you leave someone, you never know if that’s the last time you’ll see them. we should act like that every time.

this is also part of the thrust behind my “go big/go deep or go home” mantra. that started with me from my tallahassee christian youth group crew (mostly roshad), but now has taken on this added meaning. since this might be the last time i see you, let’s make the most of the time we have now.

some people might think that would get exhausting. and maybe it does. but in the ten-ish years i’ve been living like that, it has yet to get exhausting to me. if anything, it makes people (myself included) happier to see someone that next time. it makes it feel more like a gift.

finally, this phenomenon of not seeing people while they’re in town and then when they’re gone (whether they move or die) is hilarious to see written about during the time of seneca’s life, 4 B.C. to 65 a.d.* so knowing that it’s been a problem forever, we just need to make active decisions to change it.

this is a big part of why i’ve decided to just get very clear (sometimes painfully explicit, even to myself) with who my close friends are. then i set up regular hang out sessions with them so that i don’t fall into this trap. it’s tough, but you really can’t be close with everyone all the time. so it’s better, imo, to just look that in the face and deal with it in a concrete way.

friends stay with you even after death

Let us see to it that recollection of those we have lost becomes a pleasure to us. Nobody really cares to cast his mind back to something which he is never going to think of without pain. Inevitable as it is that the names of persons who were dear to us and are now lost should cause us a gnawing sort of pain when we think of them, that pain is not without a pleasure of its own. As my teacher Attalus used to say, ‘In the pleasure we find in the memory of departed friends there is a resemblance to the way in which certain bitter fruits are agreeable or the very acidity of an exceedingly old wine has its attraction. But after a certain interval all that pained us is obliterated and the enjoyment comes to us unalloyed.’ … Thinking of departed friends is to me something sweet and mellow. For when I had them with me it was with the feeling that I was going to lose them, and now that I have lost them I keep the feeling that I have them with me still.

it’s interesting that we do think of death as this irreversible moment that changes things forever. and, to be sure, it definitely does. but sometimes i find myself or hear others discussing death like we’re going to forget. but, like seneca said, my experience has shown that not to be true. people who i’m really close to and are alive have basically the same relationship to me and my thoughts when they’re dead. i’ve only had a few friends die so far, but the ones that i thought about often were that way because our lives were intertwined in such an intense way for so long that many things remind me of them. whether or not they’re alive, those things still remind me of them. similiarly, friends i don’t think about often are that way before or after their death.

interesting.

what can happen at any time today / death doesn’t play by seniority​

I realize now that my sorrowing in the way I did was mainly due to the fact that I had never considered the possibility of his dying before me. That he was younger than I was, a good deal younger too, was all that ever occurred to me – as if fate paid any regard to seniority! So let us bear it constantly in mind that those we are fond of are just as liable to death as we are ourselves… Now I bear it in mind not only that all things are liable to death but that that liability is governed by no set rules. Whatever can happen at any time can happen today.

i totally fall into this trap all the time. somehow, i expect that people will die in a linear order from oldest to youngest. experience has obviously proven that to be otherwise, but i get it. the general trend is that the older people get, the more likely it is that they will die due to a body that’s unable to bounce back. and yet, people die of the unexpected and uncontrollable all the time. not only that, but it seems like the number of people i know who are getting and dying from cancer at early ages is skyrocketing. maybe i’m wrong, but i can see it happening all around me.

so this idea that people die off in age order really just isn’t that helpful.

phew. that took longer and is longer than i expected it would be, but, hey, i’m on vacation. i’ll write as long as i want i guess, heh.

* we, definitely myself included, like to imagine that “things were different back then,” but they just weren’t. the problems we’re dealing with now seem to have been the problems we’ve been dealing with for all of time. they might look different, but it seems increasingly clear that they’re the same problems.

writing: 24:23 
spell-check, link-finding, & formatting: 23:02

my (first) deathnote (deathnote 2)

sidenote: this post and the next one or two i write (i think) are both going to be about death. 

i’m fairly obsessed with the american anti-obsession with death. the lengths american society goes to to avoid thinking about, dealing with, seeing in real ways, and coping with the fact that we’re all going to die one day are amazing. i think a large portion of the issues american society faces flow from this aversion. i could go on and on about this, but that’s not the point.

the point today is to start dealing with it myself. and i’ll start with my own death (because i almost always think the place to start in in oneself). i think this may become an annual tradition. who knows. here goes:

it’s nearing the end of 2016 and i’m thinking about my death.

my first thought: i am resigned to the reality that one way or another, the oppressive systems we live in will probably kill me. if it’s not a bullet or other direct assault from a human it may be the climate and resulting catastrophe or it may be cancer from the toxic environments/lifestyles we’ve created for ourselves.

so be it.

or maybe I’ll die of old age and my body ceasing to function in a way that keeps my soul in it. that’s fine, too. it feels less likely, but hey, nothing’s impossible. and maybe i’ll look back at this when i’m 90 and think “what a ridiculous thing i wrote.”

either way, this note about my death is actually about how i want to live (knowing that i will die):

• i hope that some people i crossed paths with know what it feels like to be loved because of me
  
• i hope that people and the world are better because of my life, relationships, and work
  
• i would love to be a part of ending hunger worldwide
• i hope to be part of bringing about new ways of living that help people live lives more aligned with their true selves, people arond them, and the planet
• if there’s an afterlife, i hope that the things i did while alive land me on the side of it where there’s contentment

whether i die later today, tomorrow, or in some years, i hope i’m able to genuinely live every day like it’s my last and also like i’ll live till i’m old.

ps - also, i didn’t commit suicide. if shit gets crazy, don’t let anyone tell you i killed myself. i will never kill myself. if you hear it on tape, i was tortured. i promise. i have already died once and that experience taught me that life is much too precious to willingly end.

resources

• death, redesigned
  
• the backlash to death, redesigned
• america: a nation founded on genocide and trauma that is afraid to acknowledge death and grief
  
• 
  

writing: 18:36
spell-check, link-finding, & formatting: 9:11

the distance between what we learn in school and what we do on the job is SO far that it’s laughable (and other jabs at the academy)

welcome to today’s rant about the brokenness of our education system. this is an ongoing rant, if you haven’t been reading along. #sorrynotsorry.

some jumbled thoughts:

• a few weekends ago i had a conversation with two friends (let’s call them a & m). we were all lamenting the distance between what we learned in school and what we found we needed to know on the job. a was saying how the most useful things to her work was finance. m was saying that there was almost no relationship between what she learned in school and what she did right out of college (because it takes a while to get to a point in your career where you’re doing what you learn in school and lots of people don’t ever even get to that point because they choose to practice different types of law).
  
  now, on the one hand, i do believe that it’s really important to have time to step outside of the flow of practical learning. creating mental space to explore the history, ideas, and theories in a field of interest is important.
  
  that said, it just feels way to fucking expensive and time-consuming for what it is currently. people are putting themselves in debt to not learn skills they’re going to need on the job. is that not ludicrous? seems like there’s a strong connection here to what i wrote about the other in seneca’s letter 48: isn’t it the height of folly to learn inessential things when time’s so desperately short?
  
  
• for a while i’ve been noticing the tension in phd students between teaching and doing their research. this carries on to professors (because they’re trained in the process of earning their phds). this tension in the leaders of academia is the exact problem manifested. professors are valued by on their research publications and even though they’re given teaching responsibilities, those come secondary. engaging with the present world and putting energy towards making it better (in this case to further student learning) is said to be a requirement, but in actuality, there are no/weak systems for professors them accountable to this “requirement.”
  
  
• i’ve had a few conversations about this, but the most recent one was with a friend (let’s call her n) about funding in academia. the older we get, the more we’re both seeing into the structures that make academia possible: fucking giant government grants. for many academic institutions, when you win a grant from the government, the institution charges a massive overhead (tax) on the grant. this overhead funds all the people who work at institution, sometimes including the person who won the grant.
  
  now, on one hand, i do believe it is actually important for the government to fundamentally support education. if tax dollars can go anywhere freely, it should be education.
  
  but on the other hand, it totally seems like the people doing the educating should be getting way more of the money. from where i stand, this whole thing looks increasingly like a scheme to funnel job support money back and forth for the certain classes of people (government officials and university staff/faculty). and why is it that we can fund academia so well when literally everyone there knows how little direct good it does for the world, but we can’t see to figure out how to fund public schools? why can we afford to fund the schools that a fraction of the population goes to but we can’t fund the ones that everyone goes to? you can probably guess my answer…

hmph.

ps - in hindsight, i have no idea why i bulleted these. i hate bullets that are sentences. T_T

writing: 21:21
spell-check, link-finding, & formatting: 2:34

“you always take yourself along with you when you go abroad...”

there is a recurring theme in seneca’s writing that i am coming to appreciate a lot. in letter LV (55), he puts it like this:

“the place one’s in doesn’t make for peace of mind, it’s the spirit that makes things agreeable”

below, i’ve typed up seneca’s thoughts on the same topic but in a much more thought out way. they’re excerpts from letter CIV (104) and the argumentative arc seems perfect.

i can think of at least five people in my life who i think are suffering from lack of this knowledge. while i do believe a certain physical place can allow one to do things they couldn’t do before, most of the issues people have in places are internal. a move for a particular industry or type of culture that is strong in one place makes sense. but many relocations aren’t made with such strong determinants in mind.

since finishing graduate school, i’ve seen a number of people leave town, seeking happiness and fulfillment in their new home. turns out, a majority (but not all) of them land their new town and have the exact same struggles. seneca is on to something when he said “It’s medicine, not a particular part of the world, that a person needs if he’s ill.”

excerpts in an argumentative arc about why travel doesn’t solve people’s problems from letter CIV (and here’s letter CIV in full):

“… the man who spends his time choosing one resort after another in a hunt for peace and quiet, will in every place he visits find something to prevent him from relaxing. the story is told that someone complained to Socrates that travelling abroad had never done him any good and received the reply: ‘What else can you expect, seeing that you always take yourself along with you when you go abroad?’… If you really want to escape the things that harass you, what you’re needing is not to be in a different place but to be a different person…

…What good has travel itself been able to do anyone?… It has never acted as a check on pleasure or a restraint influence on desires; it has never controlled the temper of an angry man or quelled the reckless impulses of a  lover; never has it rid the personality of a fault… All it has ever done is distract us for a little while, through the novelty of our surroundings, like children fascinated by something they haven’t come across before. The instability, moreover, of a mind which is seriously unwell, is aggravated by it, the motion itself increasing the fitfulness and restlessness. This explains why people, after setting out for a place with the greatest of enthusiasm, are often more enthusiastic about getting away from it; like migrant birds they fly on, away even quicker than they came…

… But travel won’t make a better or saner man of yourself. For this we must spend time in study and in the writings of wise men, to learn the truths that have merged from their researches, and carry on the search ourselves for the answers that have not yet been discovered…

… So long, in fact, as you remain in ignorance of what to aim at and what to avoid, what is essential and what is superfluous, what is upright or honorable conduct and what is not, it will not be travelling but drifting…It’s medicine, not a particular part of the world, that a person needs if he’s ill.”

writing: 8:41
spell-check, link-finding, & formatting: 5:58