Learning From Loss
“To philosophize is to learn how to die.” - Cicero
When we think of loss, it is a broad category. We could lose our house, our car, a loved one, a friend, or our mind. Loss seems to be labeled when we believe that we possess something, and then sometime later, it is no longer in our possession. If this is the case, then there is some knowledge that can help us through such times of loss. I will introduce some of the hardships in my life. I will then turn to some ancient stoic philosophers to gain some insight into how we might feel and deal with loss when it shows up on our doorstep.
My Anecdote
“To bear trials with a calm mind robs misfortune of its strength and burden.” - Seneca, Hercules Oetaeus, 231-232
When we lose something or someone that we love, we experience grief. The interesting thing about grief is how and what we experience. We might think that if our cat dies, we are only mourning the loss of our furry friend. However, this is not the case. It is known that loss agglomerates so that we end up grieving all traumatic events from our past, along with the one that we are currently experiencing. With that being said, if we do not adequately process a traumatic event, then when something happens in the future, we may encounter all of the trauma that we have ever had in our lives. So when our cat dies, if we did not correctly mourn a spouse who passed two years prior, we may end up crying for a week and not know why.
Now, in my life, I would say that I’ve had three primary traumatic events. My parents went through a divorce when I was thirteen, I lost my stepfather who I loved very dearly several years ago, and I’ve had to deal with a bipolar, alcoholic father who recently passed away.
The divorce certainly happened during some of the most formative years of my life. For a long time, I became bitter, cynical, and even angry with and at my parents. It took many years of practicing forgiveness and gratitude before I was able to let go completely.
My stepfather came into my life in the middle of my high school career. This era was undoubtedly a difficult time for me. I was working very hard to get into a prestigious college, along with my family life being no less than the eye of a hurricane due to the divorce. My stepfather was an incredibly kind, gentle, patient, and understanding man. His mentality and demeanor were opposed to my father, who was angry, bitter, and cynical for a vast majority of the time. This difference was a great breath of fresh air to me. He taught me how a man could be the best that he could and not to let the world beat us down into an angry pulp. However, he became ill and fell victim to the end as we all will.
Finally, my father began struggling with mental illness just about eighteen years ago. It seems as though he had a predisposition to this sort of psychological struggle. Then, when the terrorist attacks happened during September 11, 2001, he plummeted into an anxious frenzy. This point was the first time he saw a doctor for psychiatric treatment. This point marked the beginning of the end for him. In the years following, I never knew whether he would be manic or depressed, drunk, or sober. Because of this erratic behavior, it was early in my college career that I began to divorce myself emotionally from him. I realized that I needed to live my life and to keep him at a distance that was healthy for me. This space allowed me to forgive him because I saw him for the first time as a person and not a father who should be perfect. It took me a while to realize, but it was during this time as well that I began to accept that I did not have a biological father figure in my life. Because of my father’s condition, along with many choices that he made, I started to mourn the loss of him then. I was able to realize this and began to look for father figures elsewhere. I was able to find that emotional stability at first in my stepfather, and later in friends and mentors who I still keep in close contact with to this day.
Because of this emotional processing and approach I had to take to keep myself emotionally safe and sane when I received the call notifying me of my father’s death, I was incredibly calm. The sad part is that I was waiting for this call for years. I did not expect him to go how he did, but I can say that I was prepared for his passing. Because I pre-processed many of the feelings, I was able to take on this tremendous challenge directly. I was also able to process my emotions reasonably quickly. Because I had made my own life with a support network, I was able to lean on those folks in this time of need. Their support was pivotal in my working through this trauma. My mentors afforded me the ability to intellectually understanding what I was feeling; this is the most crucial aspect of mental health for me. Additionally, they pointed out what I was not experiencing and why that might be alright in the end.
Loss Hurts
“You are afraid of dying. But, come now, how is this life of yours anything but death?” - Seneca, Moral Letters, 77.18
Perhaps we can think of any loss as a symbolic death. If we lose our house, that is the death of our ability to utilize that space. When we have the loss of a loved one, that is the death of the ability to form new memories with that person. This concept is painful because when we are with someone that we love, we don’t necessarily love them, but we do love how we feel when we are in their presence. So, when that person dies, we can no longer get together and form new memories. This idea, however, can also give us hope and comfort. By creating memories in some respects, we live on forever in every person with whom we have ever interacted. We become a sea of memories that impact and influences the behavior of others. The same is true of all humans.
Living on in the memories of others does not bring that person back. It is still a traumatic situation, especially when we want so badly to form new memories with that person. So then, what might we do when these negative feelings arise? The first thing that comes to mind is acceptance. At some point in the grieving process, this word is laughable, or downright despicable. It seems though, in the long term, this is a good mark at which to aim. What has happened - the past - is also dead. It follows that the past is cast in stone, and there is nothing to be done about it in the present. So then, our choice is to identify with a loved one who is gone and to carry that as a monumental burden or to celebrate their life and accept the fact that yes, they are gone, and it is okay. To get to this point may be a long and arduous process. However, it makes sense that if we do not deny what we are feeling and we look it square in the face that it will pass quicker than if we turn our heads to look the other way. This idea means feeling the negative, bad, or sad feelings when and where they arise. That means not busying ourselves with daily tedious and monotonous tasks so that we might remain distracted indefinitely. Seneca said it best in his work On Consolation to Helvia: “It’s better to conquer grief than to device it.”
Preparation
“Soon you will die, and still you aren’t sincere, undisturbed, or free from suspicion that external things can harm you, nor are you gracious to all, knowing that wisdom and acting justly are one and the same.” - Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 4.37
I turned to stoic philosophy for this topic and article because they are all about preparation and correct action. It makes sense to me that this is a durable quality in a person that has to face a life of struggle and hardship (as we all do in some form or another). Jordan Peterson summarizes this concept very well in his book 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos:
When I received the call from the sheriff, this was the first thought that came to my mind. I thought to myself, “Okay, you’ve been playing around with all of this self-help and personal improvement for years, now is the time to either shine or go down in a burning ball of flames.” An additional thought came shortly after that, and it was Jordan Peterson talking about the fairytale called Pinocchio:
In my mind, I had failed to rescue my father from the belly of the whale because he had ended his life. I thought that if I was to save him from the belly of the whale to become a “real” boy symbolically, that I had failed because my father died in the belly of the beast. However, as I thought more about it in the days following the phone call, I realized that I had been preparing for this time for the past ten to fifteen years and that on the day he passed, was the day that I could finally rescue him from the beast. It was my opportunity to go back east and console my family and to handle his estate. It was also my time to continue to face and realize the burden that mental illness had placed on my family. By standing up and taking responsibility in such a difficult time, I realized that I had rescued my father from the belly of the beast, and I am now a “real” boy or a man, my own man. I do not live in fairytale land, I’ve stood up and faced the ugly reality that has been laid before me. I think the story of Pinocchio is especially compelling in this day and age when so many of us run from or turn our heads from hardship. The only way to overcome these (by the way, difficulties are intrinsic to life, there is no way that we cannot have them) is to face them head-on, to go to the whale and crawl inside to symbolically rescue our father who is entirely human and flawed to his core as are we. So then, if it is noble to be prepared for loss, and to rescue our father from the belly of the whale, how do we prepare for such an epic journey?
It seems as though the primary task here is keeping everything in perspective. A core tenet of stoic philosophy is memento mori or the inevitability of death. Stoic philosophers would often contemplate death as to ensure that it remained at the forefront of their mind’s eye. In modern-day, this might seem morbid or disgraceful. However, it is a sobering reminder that we are always one breath away from death.
“Keep death and exile before your eyes each day, along with everything that seems terrible - by doing so, you’ll never have a base thought nor will you have excessive desire.” - Epictetus, Enchiridion, 21
Another mental exercise that helps to keep things in perspective is the contemplation of our place in the universe. If we take a step back and zoom out from the business of our everyday life and contemplate where we are, and that we are in a potentially infinite universe, then our perspective can quickly change. Stars live for a varied amount of time. The larger they are, the faster they burn out. Sort of like the saying, a candle that burns twice as bright, burns half as long. However, these “fast” burning stars still live millions of years, and the slow-burning ones can live up to 15 billion years! Let’s think about the closest and most well-known star to us, the sun. This star is about 5 billion years old and according to scientists, has enough fuel for about 5 billion more years. This concept is known as an “average” sized star.
What does this mean in the context of human life? Being optimistic, humans live for about 100 years. This idea implies that the maximum human lifespan is about 0.000002% of that of our sun. Even if a star only lived 3 million years, the maximum human lifespan is still only 0.0033% of that of a star. In other words, the shortest lifespan of a star is still thirty thousand times longer than that of the most extended human life! This illustration should drive home the point that we are only on this earth for a VERY short time! When we die, the universe will go on. It will likely go on for billions and billions of years without us.
“Think of the whole universe of matter and how small your share. Think about the expanse of time and how brief -- almost momentary -- the part marked for you. Think of the workings of fate and how infinitesimal your role.” - Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 5.24
When we take a step back and realize the vastness of the cosmos and combine that with meditations on death and how tightly knit it is with life itself, perhaps we can begin to live with a bit more ease. After all, from where does our anxiety come? It makes sense that we are anxious when we are attempting to control things that we cannot. When we deceive ourselves into thinking that our reach is far more extensive than it is, that is when we start to get anxious. We can move to a place of comfort when we realize, the only thing that we have is within ourselves. We can move to a place of ease when we recognize, mainly that we cannot affect the things around us, but we do have control over how we let those events and people affect our daily lives.
“This is the mark of perfection of character -- to spend each day as if it were your last, without frenzy, laziness, or any pretending.” - Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 7.69
Conclusion
Based on our past experiences, we all process loss and or trauma differently. For some, it is much easier to work through; for others, it can be life-altering and downright crippling. Based on what I have experienced, many wise people have thought about such things in life, and in hard times I look toward them for advice. From what I have learned, life is mainly about preparation. If we take time to prepare for things that are inevitable such as loss when the time comes, our chance of getting caught off guard will be less, and if we do waiver, we will likely be able to recover more quickly than if we had not prepared at all. So then, let us realize that loss is a part of life and that there are tools that allow us to process such situations and to move on as best we can. Let us make it our life’s work to continue to discover methods that we can place into our metaphorical toolbox. If we have this objective, then when life throws us a curveball (as it will), we can, at the very least dodge it, and at best catch it, and turn it around into something useful.