Travels with Epicurus by Daniel Klein

I discovered this little gem of a book, read in less than one weekend, as part of a Kindle search for "greek travel essays".  The fact that it was written on the Greek island of Hydra, which we plan to visit this fall, intrigued me.

What I discovered was a poignant, well written search for how best to live life as an old man.  In his seventies, Daniel Klein wants to make the most of his remaining life on earth.

Klein uses Epicurus, the Hellenistic philosopher, as the framework for his search.  Along the way he also looks through many other lenses as well, as far ranging as Freud to Hinduism to Stoicism to Charles Dickens.

Klein posits that men should embrace old age rather than forestall their youth.  Rather than taking extreme measures to delay the aging process, there is much pleasure to be gleaned from the process of slowing down, of stepping back from the chaos of middle age and relishing life for what it is.

Perhaps this is best encapsulated in the Thomas Merton quote below: "Take more time, cover less ground."

That notion resonates with me.  I do believe that we miss out on life through hurry, focusing too much on finite, often meaningless goals.  There should be a joy to slowing down and taking in the world that surrounds us every minute of every day.  Maybe there is a reason that our bodies slow as we age, the better to perceive the world from a new perspective with higher resolution.

Klein's search for the best way to age makes me glad to have found Stoicism.  I do believe that even my tenuous grasp on it provides a foothold on something that might profoundly change my life.

Excerpts from the book that grabbed me:

• “It is not the young man who should be considered fortunate but the old man who has lived well, because the young man in his prime wanders much by chance, vacillating in his beliefs, while the old man has docked in the harbor, having safeguarded his true happiness.”
• “Before you eat or drink anything, carefully consider with whom you eat or drink rather than what you eat or drink,
• “And with Epicurus, I conceive that pleasures are to be avoided if greater pains be the consequence, and pains to be coveted that will terminate in greater pleasures.”
• When my father-in-law, Jan Vuijst, a Dutch Reformed minister, was on his deathbed, I had a deeply intimate conversation with him—as it turned out, my last conversation with him. He said to me, “It was a privilege to have lived.” The soulful gratitude of that simple statement will never leave me.
• Eyes closed, breath stilled, listening to the exquisite melancholy of Cavaradossi’s romanza to Tosca under the stars as he awaits his execution crying out, “Never have I loved life more!” sometimes—just sometimes—I can feel my yearnings made sublime.
• And what about those all-too-rare moments when a glimpse of sky or a leaf dancing in the wind suddenly plucks me out of my day-to-day consciousness and sets me floating in some transcendent kingdom?
• And now I remind myself that I must heed William Blake’s warning not to attempt to cling to a sublime experience, but rather allow it to come and go with grace. In another of his metaphysical poems, the four-line jewel called “Eternity,” he writes: He who binds to himself a joy Does the winged life destroy; But he who kisses the joy as it flies Lives in Eternity’s sunrise.
• Take more time, cover less ground. —THOMAS MERTON
• Perhaps if we are as mindful as we possibly can be of where we are in life right now, the most fulfilling options of how to live these years will reveal themselves to us, not by rigorously following the prescriptions of the wise philosophers, yet by being ever mindful of their wisdom.
• We can try their ideas on for size, see how they fit with our considered values. This may be what it means to grow old philosophically.