Daniel Klein in his book Travels with Epicurus describes the fulfilled old man as the man who is free from vacillations and like the Zen Buddhists who are free from “the emptiness of striving.” That is what radical freedom is—i.e., freedom from striving. The reason old age is so good is because by then, hopefully, one has achieved the fulfilled life and the striving is over and the enjoyment is all. One should be living rather than striving. If one has not started living, one must start before its too late.
Marcus Aurelius was a 2nd century CE Roman Emperor and also a philosopher. Like Epicurus he was a Stoic who wrote a book called Meditations, which he wrote for himself, since he said he did not write to get favorable opinions from others. According to the Stoics, virtue is good and only vice is bad. The things which most of us strive for are really indifferent to our happiness because our lives are not made good or bad by our having or lacking them. That is why things are not important. Living is important.
Marcus Aurelius was a bit like Epicurus. This is what Aurelius said, “It is not death that a man should fear, but he should fear never beginning to live.” Henry David Thoreau had similar views. He said that he did not want to come to the end of his life to find out that he had not lived at all. To both that was the point. Living life well. Not by striving; by living. Thoreau also said this:
“Most men, even in this comparatively free country, through mere ignorance and mistake, are so occupied with the fractious cares and superfluous coarse labors of life that is finer fruits cannot be plucked by them.”
In a word, too many of us allow striving to interfere with living. Instead we should be content.
Of course, in the modern world in particular commercial interests are expert at creating desires for things which will not satisfy us, but will satisfy them! They will have their desires satisfied by our striving not us. We will never be content by trying to satisfying desires.
This is how Daniel Klein described the contented life of Epicurus:
“Epicurus may have predated Madison Avenue by a few millennia, but he already detected the commercial world’s uncanny ability to make us think we need stuff we don’t—and as the world of commerce keeps chugging along, to need ever newer stuff. But when shopping for the latest thing—usually something we do not really need–Epicurus’s all-important life of tranquil pleasure is nowhere to be found.”
Commercial interests seek to keep us striving for ever more and better and newer stuff, but if we fall for that we will never get off the striving. We will be on a endless spinning cycle that never reaches the goal of contentment. We will never have enough.
Epicurus, ever the eloquent Greek put it this way: “Nothing is enough for the man to whom enough is too little.”
Do you know anyone like that? I know at least one. A famous president. But there are many like that.
This is wisdom. And radical freedom.
