A letter on illness and consolation.
S.R.,
You have heard my many complaints these past few months, my groans, my sighs, my wincing, and amidst these that dictum of Plato’s which has ever been on my lips, that, “the body is a prison like an oyster in a shell,” but let me quote the fragment here:
“…unentombed as we are now in this thing we call a body, trapped, like oysters.”
Phaedrus 250c6–8 (my translation)
And all for a little back pain.
I should not want you to take my complaints seriously, nor take them as genuine expressions of contempt for our being embodied. There was a time when, young and obnoxious, and full of zeal, I would go around saying,
“…but as one already dying, disdain the flesh.”
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 2.2.1 (my translation)
and in my youth misinterpreted these injunctions as being, for lack of a better term, let us say, “serious”. Perhaps disdain is too strong a word, too involved, let us say. I think we might better understand the sentiment as being opposed to the kind of life which does not seek more than being embodied (and I’m sure this form of life takes many forms, and I would be reluctant to call it, solely, a kind of hedonism), rather than outright contempt for our being so.
Epictetus in his Encheiridion speaks of our bodily impediments that are hindrances to the body only:
“Illness is an impediment of the body, but not to the will (prohairesis) unless the will wishes it to be. Lameness is an impediment of the leg, but not of the will. And add this commentary (epilegein) to each of those things which impede you: you will find that it’s an impediment of something else, but not that which is yours.”
Encheiridion 9 (my translation)
Epictetus, might I remind you, is alleged to have been lame in one leg from childhood, and so we can be somewhat safe in assuming that he is using himself as an example.
Regardless, the statement stands on its own two feet: there is something we are that is separate, at least conventionally (I should like for the moment to avoid the mind-body problem, or some variation thereof), from our bodily conditions, our circumstances, though we only have the privilege of experiencing this in grave moments, or minor inconveniences.
Seneca, in one of his letters, mentions his sudden attacks of asthma:
“For some time ill health had given me reprieve; it has come upon me, unexpectedly. What kind of ill health? You have, by all means, the right to ask, in so far as no kind is unknown to me. I am marked by, nevertheless, one ailment. I do not know why I should call it by its Greek name, as ‘shortness of breath’ is enough.”
He goes on to recount the dreadful sensation of gasping for air, and how well it is said that asthma is like rehearsing death; he takes some consolation in the thought that he is, “having a go at death”.
“And I in the midst of my stifled breathing haven’t ceased to rest upon cheerful and spirited thoughts.”
Epistulae Morales 54.3 (my translation)
Granted, these cheerful thoughts amount to a kind of cheerful expression in those dreadful moments, and Seneca interprets these bouts of asthma as opportunities to prepare himself in coming face-to-face with it (or so it feels to him, anyway).
We can, so it seems, find even some pleasure in our maladies – at the very least in the opportunity to rise above them even in moments when to rise at all is difficult enough, or in a kind of defiance of our circumstances.
I’ve found not some small pleasure in my recent inconveniences, though I’ve been through worse, and with greater pleasure; I used to take my health for granted, but with its absence in degrees I’ve developed a newfound appreciation for those moments free of pain, or, at the very least, in the effort to reclaim good health.
But what of those conditions incurable, be they illnesses or circumstances, from which we find no respite permanently, with which we are bound to live, which we are forced to endure?
Viktor Frankl’s answer in his work (at least, one iteration of an answer), Man’s Search for Meaning, is quite poignant:
“[H]uman life, under any circumstances, never ceases to have a meaning, and… this infinite meaning of life includes suffering and dying, privation and death” (86).
It is, in any case, time that I do my prescribed exercises –
“But so it is, and nature has contrived /
To struggle on without a break thus far…”
Edna St. Vincent Millay, I Shall Forget You Presently My Dear
Sincerely,
George