Travels with Epicurus

 Daniel Klein (actual book)

This is a lovely little meditative work on what it means to grow old gracefully.  Gracefully in the older sense of the word – as in ‘full of grace’.  He goes to Greece to meditate on the philosophy of Epicurus and of the Stoics and because it seems to him that the Greeks are especially good at this process of being old as a defined stage of life.   He relates an explanation to him of the meaning of use of ‘komboloi’ – inaccurately described as ‘worry beads’ in English as a method that Greeks use to define and extend time.  I think it is a meditative practice that allows time to be measured according to your own perception.  Apparently there are two words for ‘time’ in Greek – Chronos – the dimension of time that we are familiar with and Kairos – the quality of time that can be expressed in why a vacation day can seem to last for a week or the hushed moment before a kiss can seem to stretch out forever.  Learning to appreciate ‘Kairos’ seems to be an important concept if one wants to grow old gracefully.

Where to begin?  I guess it comes from defining one’s terms.  What is a good old age?  A good death can be described as one where you do not suffer – where you slip away without any realization that you have departed this mortal coil.  So perhaps one can define a ‘good’ old age as one where you do not suffer.  Personally, I do not like this approach.  It seems that the actual death experience would be important.  I would feel cheated if I didn’t fully go through the cessation of life.  It may be painful and somewhat stressful, but it is literally the last thing I will ever feel.   As for suffering, as the Buddhists and the US Marine Corps both preach – Pain is inevitable, Suffering is optional.  Suffering involves deliberate actual mental decision that negatively addresses your current experience.  One must compare it with your ‘normal’ existence and think about the difference.  In this way, it can be said that animals do not usually suffer in the same way that humans do.  They may feel pain or a sense of loss but they do not suffer from contemplating their imagined self.  If you see a three legged dog, they have not just accepted their state of being, they probably cannot even imagine a different reality.  Compare that with a man who has lost a limb and spends their days missing what might have been.  Who is suffering and why? 

So part of this work is trying to accept the physical decline and eventual end in an equitable frame of mind.  But that does not seem enough, it seems that there are perhaps many advantages as well to becoming old and I need to learn and lean into those aspects so that when the time comes, I may more fully appreciate and take advantage of this stage of life.   At the very least, the absence of striving, of being, of constant change seems to be a welcome state to contemplate.  Maybe one’s life can be seen as a slow inexorable journey towards present state awareness.  When you are young, you think about the future.  As you get older, the future starts to collapse towards the present.  At some point, you probably pass the origin point and start living in the past.  I would think it would be better to try and work the limit towards the present state and fully experience the now.  Is this not what Buddhists consider enlightenment?  The ineffable present?           

In the Future History series by Robert A. Heinlein,  the main protagonist of the series, Lazarus Long,  is introduced in ‘Methuselah’s Children’ – where the story of a group of families who have been successfully selectively bred for long life that face persecution from society at large.  Among the many thought experiments that are introduced are questions about what an extended life would entail, how it would change your thinking and priorities and how society would take the revelation that their exists of long lived individuals whose fortune they could not share.  What is not yet discussed is whether or not one should grow old and die.  It is always assumed that our drive for survival is so great that choosing to extend life is always the default, understood option. 

Our lives are all the same length – there is a beginning, the present and the end.  And we can only truly experience the present.  Everything else only exists in our mind.  I think I will definitely buy some ‘komboloi’.  I am very attracted to the concept of a meditative exercise that contemplates the duration of time.  I especially like the amber beads because of their ancient organic origins. Maybe I will start to collect them.  I gave my copy of “Travels with Epicurus’ to my mother but her immediate takeaway is that one should just give up and it is not worth trying to redefine the aging process.  Maybe she is right- who am I to judge? – She is further down the road than I am.