Heroes Not Zombies

Virginia Woolf’s favourite Montaigne quote came from his last essay…..

Life should be an aim unto itself, a purpose unto itself.

We are meaning seeking, and meaning creating organisms, we humans. We strive to make sense of our experiences and our life. We keep coming back to the idea of purpose…..what’s the purpose of my life? Why am I here? We will all find our own paths to the answers to those questions, but for Montaigne his path was not through religion or politics. It was through fully engaging with everyday life. This is consistent with my favourite French phrase – “L’émerveillement du quotidien” – which works as a touchstone in my own daily life. Roughly translated it means “the wonder of the every day”.

It continues to astonish me that the universe has created me and you, that we are the children of the stars, our whole beings emerging within this vast, interconnected web of subjects. Each one of us created only once, to live a unique and unrepeatable life. Only I, only you, can experience what we experience. Only you, only I, can express those experiences in our own, particular, personal and unique ways.

Sarah Bakewell concludes by saying the modern world could gain a lot from Montaigne’s sense of life.

It could use his sense of moderation, his love of sociability and courtesy, his suspension of judgement, and his subtle understanding of the psychological mechanisms involved in confrontation and conflict.

That’s a powerful conclusion. We could certainly do with a bit of moderation. Sometimes it seems to me the whole economic system we have created is based on greed and selfishness. The constant drive to consume more, to “grow” by ripping more out of the planet and destroying our natural homes strikes me as a kind of madness. Shouldn’t we be aiming at sustainability instead of increasing consumption? What’s the point of billionaires? They can’t even spend all the wealth they’ve grabbed. How sustainable is climate change? Yep, it’s way past time we needed a bit of moderation.

Sociability is such a key characteristic of healthy human life. We are social creatures. We don’t live in separate bubbles. We need each other. Ubuntu – I am because you are.

Courtesy – oh my goodness how much do we need more courtesy in our social and political discourse? Sometimes it feels as if social media is drowning in disrespect and hatred. How much more nourishing, more healthy, would exchanges and conversations be if they were based on courtesy and respect for difference?

There’s such a rush to judgement in our media and society, yet I find the only way to get to know another person and to understand them is by not judging them. Suspending judgement creates a space for compassion and tolerance, two qualities we need to have healthy relationships.

Montaigne lived through a time of great conflict and violence, thriving despite that by concentrating on the here and now, remaining open and welcoming to everyone, delighting in individual differences and staying full of curiosity and wonder every day. His humility and unceasing desire to understand himself and others underpins his writing and that delights me.

I don’t think of Montaigne as a hero but I find his essays an enormous inspiration. We shouldn’t try to be the same as Montaigne, we are, each of us, unique and different after all, but we’d have a better world if we all tried harder to understand ourselves and chose to live more consciously, with more wonder and more compassion.

I’ve enjoyed re-reading Sarah Bakewell’s “How to live”, and I hope you’ve enjoyed these last twenty posts where I’ve reflected on her twenty possible answers to that most fundamental of questions, which reminds me of the fabulous Mary Oliver poem, The Summer Day, which ends with the following lines….

Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?