Tag: Loss

Doing Without – II

The response to my yesterday’s post “Doing Without” has been very interesting. It is after I read the comments that I realized that I should have perhaps added the context in which my friend sent me the quote. The context is in his present despondent mood, having lost his wife of 38 years to cancer. He was talking about his sudden loneliness and I had expressed that if I could, I would have gone over to be with him for some time as, he is unable to leave his home due to his own commitments.

The happiness quotient for material things certainly can be explained away by all that my readers have commented upon. Quite how does one do so in the context of a relationship that has ended in a tragic way? Having personally gone through the experience of losing my wife last year, I can understand his despondency. I think that I have come to grips with the loss whereas he has been unable to so far. He is taking recourse to philosophy!

Let me quote Bertrand Russel in full:

“I have frequently experienced myself the mood in which I felt that all is vanity; I have emerged from it not by any philosophy, but owing to some imperative necessity of action. If your child is ill, you may be unhappy, but you will not feel that all is vanity; you will feel that the restoring of the child to health is a matter to be attended to regardless of the question of whether there is ultimate value in human life or not. … The feeling is one born of a too easy satisfaction of natural needs. The human animal, like others, is adapted to a certain amount of struggle for life, and when by means of great wealth homo sapiens can gratify all his whims without effort, the mere absence of effort from his life removes an essential ingredient of happiness. The man who acquires easily things for which he feels only a very moderate desire concludes that the attainment of desire does not bring happiness. If he is of a philosophic disposition, he concludes that human life is essentially wretched, since the man who has all he wants is still unhappy. He forgets that to be without some of the things you want is an indispensable part of happiness.”(Emphasis mine)

In the context of relationships, this does not make sense. Having had one very satisfying and happy relationship for decades and to suddenly to lose it and “be without” cannot be part of happiness. Unless he is totally unfeeling or he has suddenly found an alternative, how can he be happy immediately after the loss?

I am sure that my friend will get over his despondency in time. I certainly hope so. On the other hand, I also know of a some cases where this was not possible, and the surviving spouse wasted away.

Something does not quite gel with what Bertrand Russell says when it comes to doing without relationships when one has lost a cherished one.

There Is Both Madness And Reason in ‘Love’.

“Always, there is a drop of madness in love, yet always, there is a drop of reason in madness.”
– F. Nietzsche
Since the recent loss of my wife, I have been trying to make sense about love, death, attachment etc at a personal experiential level. All the theory and philosophy that I have studied and am in the process of learning has been of no help whatsoever.

Death of a loved one is a traumatic experience. The aftermath of the initial busyness brings one down to earth with an inexpressible sense of emptiness and loss. No amount of platitudes like ‘time is a great healer’ etc, has any effect. One has to live through it. I am doing that and finding my own way of handling the new situtation.

In my search for some answers, I returned to one of my old time favourites, Zen And The Art Of Motorcycle Maintenance, by Robert M. Pirsig. I had read the book in the eighties. The first time, it went right over my head, but it was being talked about so much, that I read a couple of times more before it made some sense to me.

This is the third copy that I have bought and this time, I found what I was looking for in the Afterword. During the narration, the author goes on a cross USA motorcycle trip with his young son Chris. Some of the scenes describing the trip, conversations with Chris etc, are remarkable in themselves, but the afterword is something altogether different.

Chris, as a grown up young man of early twenties, gets killed by a couple of muggers. What Pirsig goes through with that loss is so beautifully described by him and the way he concludes the narration resonated with me sufficiently and strongly enough for me to come to grips with my own sense of loss and inability to let go.

Yes, there is both madness and reason in love.