Another gem from high school history class

This one from European History, senior year:

On Montaigne's Essay "XVII. That to study philosophy is to learn to die"

"Cicero says that 'to study philosophy is nothing but to prepare one's self to die.'" So begins Michel de Montaigne's twenty-seventh essay, in which he attempts to train his mind to overcome fear of death. Ignoring death, decides Montaigne, doesn't work -- first of all, death is impossible to ignore, because it surrounds us; secondly, if one ignores death, it is all the more devastating when it appears. Let us then try the opposite: thinking constantly of death. Constant awareness of death causes the mind to numb to its horror; what is more, it prompts one to order one's affairs in anticipation of death, so that when death arrives, nothing is left undone. Montaigne believes that he has found his solution:

"For my part, I am, thanks be to God, at this instant in such a condition, that I am ready to dislodge, whenever it shall please Him, without regret for anything whatsoever. I disengage myself throughout from all worldly relations; my leave is soon taken of all but myself. Never did any one prepare to bid adieu to the world more absolutely and unreservedly, and to shake hands with all manner of interest in it, than I expect to do."

But if Montaigne were indeed so reconciled to death, he would be able to let the matter rest. He belies his professed comfort by listing many other reasons that death is harmless -- far from being fearless, he is still trying to convince himself not to fear. Death cannot be so bad, he says; like birth, it is merely a transition from one world to another; the worth of a life is not measured by its length; death is natural; death and life are equally pleasing; nothing is known about the afterlife, so it should not be feared, etc. At the very end, he realizes that he is still uncertain: exasperated, he concludes with the sentence, "Happy is the death that leaves us no leisure to prepare things for all this foppery."

My first scathing book review

I just found a cache of my high school papers, and here's one gem (written for a US History course in my junior year):

The Metaphysical Club: A Herculean Feat of, Well, Research

In the middle to late nineteenth century, four great men were born. They came of age during the Civil War, and in their adulthood, they contributed to a great transition of ideas. These four men were Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., William James, Charles Peirce, and John Dewey. In The Metaphysical Club: A Story of Ideas in America, Louis Menand follows the threads of these men's lives, in the process revealing the growth of a new way of thinking: pragmatism. Menand's book is a magnificent specimen of research, describing not only the ideas but also the denizens and characteristics of the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century; however, the book offers little beyond simple information.

The central focus of the book is the progress of philosophy. The great transition of belief that was made was essentially from the idea that truth was something hidden and discoverable to the idea that all accessible truth was defined by our beliefs. Advances in science and mathematics helped trigger this transition, especially Darwinian evolution and probability theory. Darwinism provoked philosophers to ask whether the world was evolving toward a particular planned state, or whether the progress was random. Probability theory and its bell-curvian statistics led to two thoughts: first, just as more scientific trials lead to a more accurate measurement, more people thinking might lead the collective consciousness closer to the truth; and second, society has certain habits at any given time: murder rates stay relatively constant, for example.

העברית

כמעט מעבר לסף הזיכרון
היית שם, עם פנים שזופות
מלאות נקבוביות שהרגשתי ממוזלת לראות מקרוב.
באמצע הלילה שכבנו בשקי שינה
וחיכינו לצאת לטיול זריחה שלבסוף לא התקיים
(בעטיים של עננים שהסתירו את השחר העולה).
אני זוכרת את ההקלה ואת האכזבה --
ללכת שוב לישון בלי לעמול עבורו נראה כהנאה ריקה.
אבל קודם לכן, בשעה שחיכינו
הסתכלנו זאת בזאת, ודיברנו
ונגענו בידיים, עד שאמרת שאולי זה לא מתאים.
והייתי יותר מדי צעירה, אבל העמדתי פנים שהבנתי
והרגשתי מבוגרת ונבונה, כאילו הפקדת סוד נדיר בידיי.
בשדה התעופה, קראת בספר עברי
שורה על שורה של תיבות קטנות, עם מילה באנגלית פה ושם.
לא הרגשתי שאיבדתי אותך ביום ההוא
כי אם ששלחת אותי לדרכי, ושהייתי מסוגלת לו.

שמך אינו זכור לי
אבל השתכפלת בחלוף השנים.
היית ציפי, ששרה ביער כשהלכה להשתין
(זה היה רק לאחר שנה אחת).
והיית נעמי, שישבתי ברצפת הפרוזדור ליד משרדה, וידעתי שאסור לי להיכנס
אולם חיכיתי אף על פי כן, מלאת תקווה ובושה.
והיית אביטל, שקראה לי ספר ילדים כשבכיתי בבית קפה,
ועשתה קולות שונות לכל דמות.
והיית גם שירה, שלימדה אותנו את מילות היחס
והשתמשה בתיק שלה כדוגמה -- חפצים "ב"-משהו --
אך חדלה לפתע, והייתי בטוחה שהיא נזכרה ששם היה לה טמפון.

ואחר כך היית סיגלית, שהשאילה לי את צעיפה כשהיה לי קר בכיתה.
הופתעתי מחציית הגבולות הזאת, מתנה כה פשוטה שהרעיפה עליי חמימות
שהחזקתי בה למשך השנה השלמה הבאה.
אצל סיגלית בכיתי במרכז ההדפסה במרתף, ובמכונית, ובכיתה
וסימסתי בתעתיק, ודאגתי על כאב חלציה.
שלחתי לה מכתבים וחיבורים וגלי אור.
ישבתי אצלה כמו עמוס עוז הצעיר אצל זלדה, וקראנו על זלדה ועל עמוס עוז הצעיר.
היא לא נבהלה מכאב ולא מתשוקה
ועלה על דעתי שאולי אינני כל כך נוראית.
אחר כך, בעולם אחר,
מישהי קראה לי אמיצה.

באתי אפוא לארץ הבוערת מקנאות ומאדישות
לחפש את מורות מורותיי ומורותיהן וכן הלאה
(ואולי מורה אחד או שניים גם כן)
ולהיות מורבצת על ידי אחת, צְוֵויי, תַלַתֶה שפות
ולזכות, אם ירצה השם, לאהבה הבוטה כל כך
שמנפצת אותי לרסיסים
ויולדת אותי
שלמה
חדשה
וישנה נושנה.

Tefillat HaDerekh

Dear G!d,

Please get me there safe and help me with the transition.

Help me set my work aside and be present when it's time to be present, and help me relax my mind so that it can make space for each thing, even when it feels like there are too many things.

Help my body let go of its clenchedness and fatigue and help me find the energy to get more energy.

Help me to let go of commitments that don't deserve to be at the center, so that they make way for the work that's mine to do.

Help me ask for help and help me accept it when it's offered.

Help me to have the courage to walk into the dragon's mouth which is full of the flames of poetry and love and hope for redemption, personal, communal, and global.

Help me rest whenever I can and need to.

Help me to remember that it is You who opens up the path of least resistance, and that Your hands are human hands and human hands are Your hands.

Help me surrender to Your plans and let go of my own effort.

Help me let go of trying to return to You so that I can be free to walk towards You, fly towards You, fall towards You, swim towards You, learn towards You, love towards You, write towards You and voyage towards You.

Amennnnnnnnnn.

"Mindful eating" is not always a helpful concept

I've been having the following thoughts and feelings for a long time, but I think due to handling things better lately, I'm finally at the point where I can articulate them more clearly.

Here they are, in short:

When I first started working with a nutritionist, I didn't understand the point of mindful eating at all. I'm not sure what I thought the reasons for it were -- I guess partly it's so often used to try to get people to eat *less* (which is the opposite of what I need) that I was wary of it for that reason; and also, just a sense that it's part of a "culture of spiritual 'virtue' / perfectionism" that I feel very suspicious of in general (which to be clear I do not think is intrinsic to the Eastern religions from which the concept of mindfulness emerged -- but I do think it's intrinsic to the way the Western world has appropriated it for its own Protestant-Ethic purposes).