Can Wisdom Protect Us From Sorrow?

Lose a leg and we can hobble on crutches. Lose both legs and we can still reason just as well. But a healthy body isn’t worth much if the mind is diseased or damaged.

“The sicknesses of the mind are both more pernicious, and are of greater number, than those that afflict the body,” Cicero tells us. “…and a sick soul is always amiss. It can neither grasp nor withstand anything, and it never stops longing for something.”

It’s understandable, then, that Cicero gives so much attention to aegritudo in book three. It’s the “fresh opinion of a present evil,” specifically psychological distress, grief, and sorrow. It’s an unexamined feeling that something has gone wrong.

These emotions pop up frequently in life and might hobble us if we have nothing ready to counter them. Its source could be everything from the minor sting of a setback to the crushing weight of a loved one dying.

With his usual love of freethinking, Cicero slices and dices the opinions of antiquity’s greatest philosophers, with no respect for dogma. He takes one opinion from one school, and another from a philosopher of a completely different school. All the while, Epicurus is mocked with a continuous stream of verbiage, which is actually pretty funny and impressive in the original Latin.

Most of Cicero’s conclusions align with my experience, and I don’t have tons to add. I’ll just highlight three points:

Time vs Reason

Despite his praise for philosophy and reason, Cicero provides a very human perspective on mourning. He admits that after his daughter Tullia died it was not reason alone nor philosophy that removed his grief.

Time was required. If you think that sounds like the trite truism, “time heals all wounds,” then you’re right. It was an old truism even in Cicero’s time. The Greek playwright Menander wrote that “time is the healer of all necessary evils,” 250 years before Tusculan Disputations was published.

But Cicero is not dismissing philosophy and reason. He insists:

• Reason prepares the mind via premeditatio malorum and playing the “and then what game,” and makes the eventual wound less deep.

• Reason explains why suffering occurs. Distress stems from a fresh opinion that something terrible has happened, which is an opinion that can change with time.

• Time creates distance so the mind can accept the logical arguments that reason tries to provide.

• And when grief goes on irrationally long, reason can help persuade mourners that something is amiss. We see Seneca do this in “To Marcia on Consolation.”

Don’t Hide From It:

Cicero tells us that Epicurus instructed students to divert their minds from troubles and anxieties by distracting themselves from the painful subject and contemplating unrelated pleasures.

Cicero gives us philosophical reasons for why this is a bad idea. And they hold up. But modern psychological research agrees with his conclusion. The term is “experiential avoidance,” and the consensus is that it makes underlying distress worse. There’s a rebound effect where if you try to divert your mind from a thought, you tend to dwell on it more. It keeps returning with more intensity and emotional sting the more you try to distract yourself.

It’s always better to explore the thought and test its validity with what you believe.

The Delusion of Grudges

I’ve long been aware that I harbor a delusion. I’ve rid myself of it multiple times, but on the rare occasions when I lose my temper or experience other strong emotions, it creeps back in.

Some stubborn part of me believes that relaxing my guard and just letting things go would be a betrayal of justice

Have I been wronged? I should be angry about it. Have I lost someone or something? Not being angry or sad about it would be letting a wrong go unpunished. It would be like inviting a repeat of the same.

Cicero makes it clear that this is nonsensical. The universe doesn’t need my help maintaining balance, and it’s not going to right a wrong or bring about justice just because I’m angry or sulking. Only I can right a wrong, and that takes action, not complaint. Reminding myself of this when the tendency crops up makes it much easier to let go of the trouble.

Thanks for reading Socratic State of Mind.

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