Life Be Not Sad
The end of life is not a fun thing to think about, at least for yourself. That said, humans have an inexplicable (to me) and strange (also to me) obsession with how other people die, especially the famous ones. Socrates poisoned himself. Albert Camus and James Dean expired in car crashes. Nietzsche went crazy and then lived another eleven years before dying of a stroke on August 25. “Posterity loves a tragic end.” So sayeth Julian Baggini in his aeon.co article “Hume the humane.”
David Hume’s demise on August 25 (my upcoming birthday if you’re wondering why I keep bringing up the date) was anything but tragic in manner. One of his last statements was “I am dying as fast as my enemies, if I have any, could wish, and as easily and cheerfully as my best friends could desire.” His doctor later noted that “he [Hume] dies in such a happy composure of mind, that nothing could exceed it.”
Hume was an eighteenth-century historian and philosopher admired by “thousands of academic philosophers” ahead of the likes of Aristotle, Kant, and Wittgenstein. So, why isn’t he as famous? Baggini puts it this way:
Hume’s strengths as a person and thinker mean that he does not have the kind of “brand” that sells intellectuals. In short, he is not a tragic, romantic figure; his ideas do not distil into an easy-to-summarise “philosophy of life”; and his distaste for fanaticism of any kind made him too sensible and moderate to inspire zealotry in his admirers….
The virtues he expressed were not extreme ones of daring or courage but quiet ones of amiability, modesty, generosity of spirit, hospitality. Lest this sound like little, consider how difficult it is to live our lives consistently expressing such virtues.
During his life, Hume suffered depression at one point but came out of it when he “realized that to remain in good health and spirits, it was necessary not only to study, but to exercise and to seek the company of friends.” Hume’s philosophy, like that of many others was thoughtful and complex. The essence, however, according to Baggini, was this:
We should never allow our pursuit of learning and knowledge to get in the way of the softening pleasures of food, drink, company, and play. Hume modelled a way of life that was gentle, reasonable, amiable: all the things public life now so rarely is.
While I can’t say that the “pursuit of learning and knowledge” is getting in the way of anything in my case, I can say that other things do detract from the enjoyment of life: money, politics, health, the state of the planet, the loss of loved ones, even the activities of daily living at times (what, the cat box needs scooping again?). One way to keep these things from doing the mental equivalent of a rugby scrum with you on the bottom is to have an offsetting mantra you can intone until you get back to that “happy composure of mind.” “Don’t worry, be happy” seems a little threadbare now, not to mention somewhat irresponsible. So does “always look on the bright side of life.”
Hume once said that “a propensity to hope and joy is real riches.” While I like the sentiment, the phrase lacks the needed incantcinctity [quality of being a succinct incantation]. Converting that to the acronym APTHJIRR doesn’t really work either. Maybe I’ll forget the mantra idea and rely instead, as Hume did, on passing my time “very well with the assistance of amusing books.” This might, as one server at Applebee’s became famous (in my mind) for saying, “help take the edge off” and have the added perk of getting me back on the road to learning and knowledge. On the other hand, I could just get together with friends tonight and go see The Big Lebowski at the Tropic Cinema. And, Eureka!, that just gave me an idea for the much-needed mantra: “What would Hume do?” I know the answer in this case. Excuse me while I get my bowling shirt out of the closet and shake out the wrinkles.
