(no subject)

[arrowdance]

"I can scarcely venture to demand that you should not grieve at all- and yet I am convinced that it is better that way. But who will ever be granted that strength of character, unless he be a man already lifted far out of fortune's reach? Even he will feel a twinge of pain when a thing like this happens- but only a twinge. As for us, we can be pardoned for having given way to tears so long as they have not run down in excessive quantities and we have checked them for ourselves. When one has lost a friend one's eyes should be neither dry nor streaming. Tears, yes, there should be, but not lamentation. ... In our tears we are trying to find means of proving that we feel the loss. We are not being governed by our grief but parading it. No one ever goes into mourning for the benefit of merely himself. Oh, the miserable folly of it all- that there should be an element of ostentation in grief! 'Come now,' you will be asking, 'are you saying that I should forget a person who has been a friend?' Well, you are not proposing to keep him very long in your memory if his memory is to last just as long as your grief. At any moment something or other will happend that will turn that long face of yours into a smiling one. I do not see very much time going by before the sense of loss is mitigated and even the keenest sorrowings settle down. Your face will cease to be its present picture of sadness as soon as you take your eyes off yourself. At the moment you are keeping a watch on your grief- but even as you do it is fading away, and the keener it is the quicker it is in stopping. Let us see to it that the 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 it's 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.' If we are to believe him, 'Thinking of friends who are alive and well is like feasting on cakes and honey. Recalling those who are gone is pleasent, but not without a touch of sourness. Who would deny, though, that even acid things like this with a harshness in their taste do stimulate the palate?'"
-Seneca, Stoic Philosopher
Letters to Lucius