Heroes Not Zombies

By “use little tricks”, Sarah Bakewell means mental exercises. She’s describing Montaigne’s philosophical practices in this chapter, and most of them come from Epicureans, Stoics and Sceptics. All three of these traditions from Hellenistic philosophers concerned with how human beings could live a good life. A good life involved finding eudomania, which is often translated as happiness or joy, although I prefer the term “human flourishing”.

The Epicureans and Stoics often recommended very similar ways to achieve this. They both promoted a combination of controlling the emotions and living, with awareness, in the present moment. Each school had its own recommendations on how to achieve this, and Montaigne did what many people today do – he mixed and matched, choosing practical “exercises” or “tricks”, such as the ones about visualising your own death in order to prepare for it which I mentioned in the post on death.

I’ve come across several of these exercises since coming to live in France, for example, in Pierre Hadot’s “Spiritual Exercises”. Like Montaigne I’m not a fan of the visualising my own death, but I have often used others you might be familiar with.

One of my favourites is “The view from on High”, where you imagine climbing a hill and looking back down on yourself so you can see your life in a larger context. In fact I had a spontaneous experience of that shortly after starting university. I grew up in Stirling and left home at 18 to study Medicine at the University of Edinburgh. After leaving my childhood home to return to Edinburgh on the first weekend visit back to see my parents I had a sensation of leaving my body as I walked along the road to the railway station. It was as if I was flying high above myself and I could see the physical me below. I looked tiny! Really tiny! And had an emotional surge of recognition that I was one small person heading out into a much larger world.

There’s a variation of “The view from on High”, called “The view from Sirius” where you imagine you come from another planet and you’re visiting Earth for the first time. In fact I remember that exercise, although not by that name, being recommended by Stephen Spender in his “Life of a Poet”. He was, of course, encouraging poets to see everything as if for the first time.

That leads me to two of my other favourite exercises – one to approach today in the knowledge that every experience will be for the first time. You’ll never have had the exact same conversation with the exact same person before today (although with some people it can feel that you keep having the same conversation again and again!). Couple this with approaching today in the knowledge that this will be last time you experience whatever you encounter today.

Taken together, “First and Last” get you to pay attention and live with greater awareness, and in so doing increase your opportunities to “savour the day”.

“anyone who clears their vision and lives in full awareness of the world as it is, Seneca says, can never be bored with life”

I’m never bored. Never. “Heroes not zombies!”

There’s really a lot to explore in these old teachings. I’ll finish this post with another of Montaigne’s favourites….

Nature has its own rhythms. Distraction works well precisely because it accords with how humans are made: Our thoughts are always elsewhere. It is only natural for us to lose focus, to slip away from both from pains and pleasures, ‘barely brushing the crust’ of them. All we need to do is let ourselves be as we are.

That reminds me of the teaching I received when learning TM meditation – when you realise your mind has drifted away from the mantra, just gently return to the mantra. A lesson with wider application than just meditation practice.