Heroes Not Zombies

Montaigne knew that some of the things he had done in the past no longer made sense to him, but he was content to presume that he must have been a different person at that time, and leave it at that. His past selves were as diverse as a group of people at a party.

I think it’s great that Montaigne didn’t regret things. I’m sure we all have things we’d rather have said or done differently in the past, but that judgement so often comes after the event. If instead of beating himself up with regret, he reflected on his past behaviour and learned from it, then he gave himself the opportunity to grow and develop. “Another bloody learning opportunity”, as one of my friends would put it.

I understand that, and it’s not a new insight. I’m also familiar with the idea that each of us is a “community of selves”, (search for that phrase in my blog for more details), each self coming forward in particular circumstances or contexts. But, for some reason, I’ve never applied that to the past.

It’s a good idea of Montaigne’s though, don’t you think? How often do we look back to previous life stages and think “I was a different person then”? Even looking at old photographs we can find ourselves thinking “was that really me? Was that what I was like back then?”

Seeing that phase, that stage, in life as a different “self” (as long as we don’t split apart all those selves and disintegrate) can be really healthy. It allows us to find the same compassion towards ourselves as we do towards others and that let’s us understand ourselves better.

Another way of thinking the “community of selves” idea is by seeing ourselves as multidimensional. Montaigne said “We are all patchwork, and so shapeless and diverse in composition that each bit, each moment, plays its own game”. This is a pretty good description of how we are all a constantly changing interplay of flows, each stream, or dimension, or part, or self, interacting with the others and coming to the fore in specific and particular times and places.

You have to be gentle with yourself (your selves) if you’re going to get to know yourself better.

….and Montaigne engage constantly with a world which always generates more things to write about – so why stop? This makes them both accidental philosophers: naturalists on a field trip into the human soul, without maps or plans, and having no idea where they will end up, or what they will do when they get there.

I love that concluding paragraph to this chapter which is about how Montaigne’s style of writing became popular in England. He just couldn’t stop writing once he’d started. He added to his essays over many, many years, re-reading, revising and adding more. He didn’t remove what he’d written but he did add to a lot of it. If he’d lived longer he would have written even more.

He understood that he would never completely understand himself, that he would never be done discovering new things, and changing his opinions and views, but he didn’t erase those past insights because they were appropriate at the the time of writing. This gives an uncommonly holistic view of his psyche. Not only was he prepared to reflect on absolutely any aspect of his experience, but he was prepared to show the threads and themes as they developed over his lifetime.

And yet, it’s important to see that he didn’t spend his life thinking all the time. He was most heavily invested in the experiences of life. His “accidental philosophising” emerged through his writing. That might seem a small point, but I reckon it’s an important one. There is, of course, a constant feedback loop connecting thought and behaviour, but I’m pretty clear that what Montaigne showed us was how daily experience can teach us how to think, and that by writing down what we think and experience we can enrich and expand our lives.

This chapter confused me at first. What is this idea of doing a good job, but not too good? Shouldn’t we always try to do our absolute best? Aren’t we constantly encouraged to find not just a “personal best”, but to be “world beating”? It turns out this is another area of Montaigne’s life where he applies his principle of moderation. He was elected mayor of Bordeaux, not a position he desired, but he was given no choice. He had to follow the king’s orders. So he did his duty and did such a good job as mayor that he was elected for a second time, something pretty much unheard of in those times. But he often wrote that he did what was expected of him but no more. He didn’t see it as an opportunity to further some political ambition, or to be the best mayor of Bordeaux. He always held something back and was criticised for that.

As I reflected on this chapter I realised it reminded me of two things. Firstly, the poison of perfectionism. How much harm does that do? How many people beat themselves up every day because they believe they are not perfect? Yet there is no such thing as perfection. The Japanese concept of wabi sabi embraces the “imperfection” of human creation and of Nature, highlighting and celebrating the evidence of dynamic change, of incompleteness and of the traces of human hands.

Secondly it reminded me of the counselling advice to be “good enough”. To be compassionate and understanding and to know that everything is contingent. That every day we can engage and commit and live in ways which are absolutely “good enough”, and that we continue to learn, to grow and mature. It’s a counsel of self acceptance and of reality.

I come back to this many times. I’m not going to beat myself up for what I would now do differently, but I can continue to strive to develop, and grow, and, I hope, to live well.

Yet again Montaigne demonstrates a way of life where he commits to whatever is in the here and now, knowing that nothing remains the same forever, and applying certain limits to moderate his efforts and actions so that he doesn’t “over do” anything. That’s a pretty unusual path these days, and I’m sure a lot of readers would find it challenging but it certainly provokes some self reflection, don’t you think?

Of the 20 possible answers to the question How to Live in Sarah Bakewell’s book, this is one of my most favourite ones. Every time I’ve visited another country I feel my life has been enriched. Montaigne’s main reason for travelling was the opportunity it brought to meet new people, people with different habits, different beliefs and different ways of seeing the world. This is exactly my experience.

Can you imagine lifestyles, culture and habits any more different than Japan, India, South Africa, Morocco, France, Italy, Spain, USA, Russia…..and these are just some of the countries I’ve visited.

Everywhere I’ve gone I’ve been fortunate to meet friendly, helpful, well meaning people. Of course, as we’re all human, we’ve found many things in common, but it’s the differences which are the most interesting thing. As Montaigne found, these encounters introduce us to different ways of thinking and different habits…..they expand our range of choices and ways of living. And they do that other thing he wrote about…..they challenge our habits. In more modern terms they make us more aware of our unconscious ways of living, giving us the opportunity to reflect and reassess our daily behaviours.

For many years I planned to emigrate once I retired and I followed through on that plan almost eight years ago now. It wasn’t a matter of preferring one country to another. It’s not that I think France is a better place than Scotland. It’s that they are very different. Different language, different culture, different climate, and consequently plenty of opportunities to discover new ways of thinking and to learn different ways to live. My move here has absolutely met my expectations. I continue to learn the language, continue to discover new ways of living my daily life. And I still travel – well, apart from the Covid times of restrictions over the last couple of years.

We move, we humans.

We travel, we humans.

We migrate, we humans.

Because in so doing we have the opportunity to enhance our lives and those of others, we can build new relationships, make new connections and increase the depth and understanding of life together.

Montaigne created a new genre of writing. Many people had written memoirs or autobiographies but nobody had published this self reflection. His essays are not about “I did this” and “I did that”, they are about what he encounters and the thoughts and feelings these encounters provoked. Maybe that doesn’t seem so ground breaking now but it was in the sixteenth century.

Many creative people find a new way to express themselves. Each of the art movements, whether impressionists, cubists, or whatever, had their pioneering artists who created paintings which were different from those ever created before.

You can say the same of musicians and composers who created distinctive and different expressions of their own unique voices. Once you become familiar with Beethoven, Mozart, Paul Simon, The Beatles, Jimi Hendrix, or whoever, you can recognise them instantly.

I remember the first time I read Jack Kerouac. His writing style was like nothing I’d ever read before. In fact, he gave it a name – Spontaneous Bop Prose.

I think this is the phenomenon referred to here. Every one of us is unique and every one of us can create and express in brand new ways. We each have our own voice, our own experiences and our own perspectives which we weave together to bring into existence something which has never existed before.

You are unique.

Montaigne lived through a particularly violent period of history. Both Catholics and Protestants committed horrendous acts of barbarity and cruelty against each other. It was easy to despair, to think the human race was a horrible one and that the end of times was nigh. Many people thought exactly that. But not Montaigne.

He believed the important thing to do was to realise that even though dreadful things were happening they weren’t happening everywhere or to everyone. In the face of the stories of despicable cruelty it was important to guard one’s own humanity, to live as fully human a life as possible.

He did this by focusing on the ordinary every day.

This is a version of focusing on the present moment, the real here and now, instead of becoming anxious, stressed and depressed by the stories of elsewhere and imagining all kinds of dreadful potential futures.

When I read about this I immediately thought about the present war in Ukraine. There’s a Ukrainian woman, called Yaroslava Antipina who lives in Kyiv and shares a photo from her apartment window every day. The photos are ordinary. They show the other tower blocks around her which she can see from her eighth floor apartment. She writes about her daily coffees and describes trips to shops, to work, to the gym and going out for driving lessons.

Ordinary every day here and now life. A human being guarding her humanity during war. She also shares another activity – putting together food parcels and delivering them to other Ukrainians in need. A generous, caring, socially conscious human being.

Yaroslava Antipina, who you can find on Twitter as “strategywoman ”, tweets daily about life in Kyiv using the hashtag “warcoffee”. Here’s a great example of her approach……

11:15 pm in #Kyiv

In war book-diary made note that now normal life falls on our shoulders. We wear it like a super cozy coat. It protects us from wind & cold.
But we know that every moment this normal life ‘coat’ might be taken away.
We learned to appreciate what we have now.

Isn’t that beautiful and remarkable? It’s exactly what Montaigne did and advised during civil war in the sixteenth century!

Moderation. It’s an old teaching isn’t it? From “you can have too much of a good thing”, to common advice to moderate any kind and food, drink, or anything else in fact! But it’s not a very attractive quality, in that it lacks excitement; it’s the antithesis of passion.

“Follow your passion” might be a popular teaching, but who says “follow your moderation”?

Montaigne didn’t like extremes. It was popular in the sixteenth century for people to admire states of ecstasy, particular in poetry, fighting and falling in love. The idea was you should go “all in” in those pursuits but he didn’t go along with that.

The qualities he valued were curiosity, sociability, kindness, fellow-feeling, adaptability, intelligent reflection, the ability to see things from another’s point of view, and goodwill.

I’m with him on all of that!

He never aspired to be some kind of hero, and was suspicious of people who had high, lofty, ambitions. He said…

Living appropriately is our great and glorious masterpiece.

One of my favourite tarot cards is “Temperance”….it’s a lovely image of flow, of balance, and, hey, of moderation.

I suppose the great thing about moderation or temperance, as portrayed in this image, is balance…..balance and flow. The liquids pouring from one cup to another and back again, the character with one foot in water and one on dry land.

There’s a special kind of balance which I really like – integration. When things are integrated they achieve a creative, productive, healthy dynamic balance. That concept didn’t exist in Montaigne’s day but it’s the modern day equivalent of his “temperately”.

Habit makes everything look bland; it is sleep inducing. Jumping to a different perspective is a way of waking oneself up again.

Montaigne believed that habits of thought, habits of culture, and social habits all numbed him. He countered this tendency by seeking out new people to talk to, reading about customs and beliefs from other countries and keeping hold of the central principle of wonder – he loved to be amazed, to be astounded, to marvel!

The right hemisphere of the brain has a particular predilection for novelty and for uniqueness. It’s the active agent of our tendency to wonder and to marvel, which is a two way process…if we want to rebalance our cerebral hemispheres (which I think we should) then exercising the right hemisphere is a good way to do that, so we can set off a positive feedback loop. The more we actively wonder, be curious and amazed, the more we are using and developing our right hemisphere, and so, the more readily our whole brain slips into wonder, curiosity and amazement.

It’s hard to see what our own habits of thought and culture are, which is why it’s especially helpful to encounter different ones from our own….another reason to be aware of social media echo chambers.

I’ve been fortunate to have had opportunities to teach in many different countries and one of the greatest gifts of that has been a chance to encounter different cultures and habits. I’ll return to that when we discuss the benefits of travel, but what I found by teaching in different cultures was that I became much more aware of my own favourite habits – which gave me the chance to adopt new ones, drop some old ones, or reaffirm the ones I consciously chose to continue.

It’s another great example of “heroes not zombies”…..waking from the sleep of habit through conscious encounter with the other, with difference.

We humans are social creatures. We have evolved that way. We are born that way. Our brains are “wired” that way. Our brains grow that way.

I am all in the open and in full view, born for company and friendship.

Montaigne thought conversation was better than books. He loved to talk with people who were very different from himself, from different backgrounds and cultures, people who held very different views from himself. This last point is very important – and it is SO different to what floods social media where people withdraw into echo chambers of like minded others and when meeting people with contrary views can only insult and threaten them.

Why did Montaigne like to converse with people who thought differently from himself? Partly to discover other ways of thinking, other ways of living and partly to provoke his own self reflection – NOT to “win” arguments or convince others of his own opinions.

No propositions astonish me, no belief offends me, whatever contrast it offers with my own.

How different is that??!

Nietzsche picked up this perspective from Montaigne and in “Human all too human” wrote…..

Among the small but endlessly abundant and therefore very effective things that science ought to heed more than the great, rare things, is goodwill. I mean those expressions of a friendly disposition in interactions, that smile of the eye, those handclasps, the ease which usually envelops nearly all human actions.

This is my experience of life. I believe that because I approach others with goodwill and a smile it’s my repeated experience that others are friendly and kind. I find other people fascinating – which was the foundation of my work with patients – but which also colours my everyday encounters.

Montaigne lived in a dangerous time of civil war but kept his house open to others encouraging strangers to come in and meet him. He didn’t suffer the violence so many others did. He quoted Seneca –

Locked places invite the thief. The burglar passes what is open.

Of course, such openness is no guarantee of safety but this reminds me how we created a reception area in our GP Practice which had a wide but open counter as we thought putting ourselves behind screens was more likely to stoke aggression. In my four decades of work I encountered not a single episode of threat, abuse or violence. Maybe you think, but times have changed, and maybe they have. I do think health care has become de-personalised. Tasks, outcomes, protocols etc seem to have squeezed out continuity of care and personal, long term relationships in Medicine. Maybe that’s made a difference – a difference, but not a good one.

Montaigne’s goodwill extended to animals and plants as well.

All humans share an element of their being and so do all other living things. It is one and he same nature that rolls it’s course.

We owe justice to men, and mercy and kindness to other creatures that may be capable of receiving it. There is some relationship between them and us, and some mutual obligation.

As Sarah Bakewell says at the end of this chapter – “We live porously and sociably. We can glide out of our own minds, if only for a few moments, in order to occupy another being’s point of view.”

Beautifully put. What a great example – to be curious, to want to learn from others, to self reflect and to act, as much as possible, with goodwill to all other living beings.

Chapter 8 in Sarah Bakewell’s book takes its title directly from Montaigne.

We should have wife, children, goods and above all, health, if we can; but we must not bind ourselves to them so strongly that our happiness depends on them. We must reserve a back shop all our own, entirely free, in which to establish our real liberty and our principal retreat and solitude.

Montaigne meant this both literally and metaphorically. Let’s take literally first. If you visit Montaigne’s chateau today you can explore the tower at one end of the building. He created a chapel on the ground floor and his library on the floor above. This was his part of the house, where he had solitude and privacy. His mother lived in the main house, and his wife had a tower of her own at the opposite end of the building.

When I visited and read about this arrangement I was reminded of Virginia Woolf’s “A room of one’s own”. In my house I have a study where I have my library, where I can read, think and write. However, most people don’t have that luxury. Many people’s homes are too small to let anyone in the family have a room of their own – apart from a bedroom perhaps, which can, perhaps, also provide this “private space” function.

There’s another way to enjoy solitude and privacy, a way I frequently recommended to patients – the Artist’s Date. I read this idea in Julia Cameron’s “The Artist’s Way”. Here’s what you do.

Schedule an event in your diary, the same way you would for an appointment with a someone, or for a meeting. The event should last for at least an hour, but could be a morning, an evening, or even a whole day…..whatever works for you.

This is event is YOUR date. You protect it and respect it the same way you would any other appointment you’d made. If someone asks you to do something at that time, you say sorry, you have a prior engagement.

There are two rules about this date – you have to do it alone. If you want to spend time with someone else, then arrange that for another time. The Artist’s Date is YOUR time. Secondly, you must spend it doing something you enjoy. It can be a visit to a park, or a gallery, or a time to paint, to write, to play music….whatever it is that you enjoy. You can’t use the time to tick items off your To Do list, to catch up on housework or plan some work. It’s time to enjoy, time to play.

You can repeat this as often as you want and is viable for you….once a week, once every couple of weeks, or whatever.

Let’s consider the metaphorical now. The private space, or “back shop” he referred to was a kind of non-attachment. It was about not grasping too tightly onto anything or anyone. Montaigne could manage this to the point of seeming aloof or detached. But if you look at his life as a whole you would see a man deeply engaged with others, playing games with his family, as well as standing apart, in his own tower, at other times.

There’s a healthy balance to be found between private time and non-attachment and communal time and engagement. And the “right balance” is different for different people. But we all need some space, and some head space, to ourselves.