Epictetus on love, loss, and the Stoic cure for heartbreak, Neruda's beautiful and humanistic Nobel Prize speech, an Indian illustrated ode to water

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[Epictetus on Love and Loss: The Stoic Strategy for Surviving Heartbreak]( [epictetus_discourses.jpg?fit=320%2C498]( “Future love does not exist,” Tolstoy wrote in contemplating [the paradoxical demands of love](. “Love is a present activity only. The man who does not manifest love in the present has not love.” It is a difficult concept to accept — we have been socialized to believe in and grasp after the happily-ever-after future of every meaningful relationship. But what happens when love, whatever its category and classification, dissolves under the interminable forces of time and change, be it by death or by some other, more deliberate demise? In the midst of what feels like an unsurvivable loss, how do we moor ourselves to the fact that even the most beautiful, most singularly gratifying things in life are merely on loan from the universe, granted us for the time being? Two millennia ago, the great Stoic philosopher Epictetus (c. 55–135 AD) argued that the antidote to this gutting grief is found not in hedging ourselves against prospective loss through artificial self-protections but, when loss does come, in orienting ourselves to it and to what preceded it differently — in training ourselves not only to accept but to embrace the temporality of all things, even those we most cherish and most wish would stretch into eternity, so that when love does vanish, we are left with the irrevocable gladness that it had entered our lives at all and animated them for the time that it did. [epictetus.jpg?w=680] Epictetus In [The Discourses of Epictetus]( ([public library]( under the heading That we ought not to be moved by a desire of those things which are not in our power, the Stoic sage writes: [2e292385-dc1c-4cfe-b95e-845f6f98c2ec.png]Who is good if he knows not who he is? and who knows what he is, if he forgets that things which have been made are perishable, and that it is not possible for one human being to be with another always? Epictetus — a proponent of the wonderful practice of [self-scrutiny applied with kindness]( — proceeds to offer a meditation on loosening the grip of grief in parting permanently from someone we have loved: [2e292385-dc1c-4cfe-b95e-845f6f98c2ec.png]When you are delighted with anything, be delighted as with a thing which is not one of those which cannot be taken away, but as something of such a kind, as an earthen pot is, or a glass cup, that, when it has been broken, you may remember what it was and may not be troubled… What you love is nothing of your own: it has been given to you for the present, not that it should not be taken from you, nor has it been given to you for all time, but as a fig is given to you or a bunch of grapes at the appointed season of the year. But if you wish for these things in winter, you are a fool. So if you wish for your son or friend when it is not allowed to you, you must know that you are wishing for a fig in winter. [HowLongIsNow_byMariaPopova.jpg?resize=680%2C521] “How Long Is Now” (Photograph by Maria Popova) In a sentiment addressing the corporeal mortality of our loved ones, but equally applicable to the loss of love in a non-physical sense, Epictetus adds: [2e292385-dc1c-4cfe-b95e-845f6f98c2ec.png]At the times when you are delighted with a thing, place before yourself the contrary appearances. What harm is it while you are kissing your child to say with a lisping voice, “To-morrow you will die”; and to a friend also, “To-morrow you will go away or I shall, and never shall we see one another again”? When we are able to regard what we love in such a way, Epictetus argues, its inevitable loss would leave in us not paralyzing devastation but what Abraham Lincoln would later term [“a sad sweet feeling in your heart.”]( To retain the memory of love’s sweetness without letting the pain of parting and loss embitter it is perhaps the greatest challenge for the bereaved heart, and its greatest achievement. Complement this particular fragment of Epictetus’s abidingly insightful [Discourses]( with computing pioneer Alan Turing on [love and loss]( and other great artists, scientists, and writers on [how to live with loss]( then revisit more of the Stoics’ timeless succor for the traumas of living: Seneca on [resilience in the face of loss]( [the antidote to anxiety]( and [what it means to be a generous human being]( Marcus Aurelius on [living through difficult times]( and [how to motivate yourself to rise each morning and do your work](. HT [Aeon]( [Forward to a friend]( Online]( [Like on Facebook]( donating=loving Each week of the past eleven years, I have poured tremendous time, thought, love, and resources into Brain Pickings, which remains free and is made possible by patronage. If you found any joy and stimulation here this year, please consider supporting my labor of love with a donation. And if you already donate, from the bottom of my heart: THANK YOU. monthly donation You can become a Sustaining Patron with a recurring monthly donation of your choosing, between a cup of tea and a Brooklyn lunch.  one-time donation Or you can become a Spontaneous Supporter with a one-time donation in any amount. [Start Now](  [Give Now]( [Against the Illusion of Separateness: Pablo Neruda’s Beautiful and Humanistic Nobel Prize Acceptance Speech]( [nobel_1968-1980.jpg?fit=320%2C488]( The great Chilean poet and diplomat Pablo Neruda (July 12, 1904–September 23, 1973) was only a small boy, just over the cusp of preconscious memory, when he had [a revelation about why we make art](. It seeded in him a lifelong devotion to literature as a supreme tool that “widens out the boundaries of our being, and unites all living things.” Although his father discouraged his precocious literary aspirations, the young Neruda found a creative lifeline in the poet, educator, and diplomat Gabriela Mistral — the director of his hometown school. Mistral — who would later become the first Latin American woman awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature and Chilean consul in Madrid, a post in which Neruda would succeed her during his own diplomatic career — recognized and nurtured the boy’s uncommon talent. Fittingly, Neruda’s first published piece, written when he was only thirteen and printed in a local daily newspaper, was an essay titled “Enthusiasm and Perseverance.” This twine thread ran through the length of his life, from his devoted diplomatic career to his soulful, sorrowful, yet buoyant poetry. His landmark collection [Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair]( composed before he turned twenty, is to this day the most widely read book of verse in Latin literature and contains some of the truest, most beautiful insight into the life of the heart humanity has ever committed to words. [pabloneruda_young.jpg?resize=680%2C402] Pablo Neruda as a young man By the time he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature less than two years before his death, Neruda had become an icon. Gabriel García Márquez, whose own subsequent [Nobel Prize acceptance speech]( echoed Neruda’s humanistic ideals, considered him “the greatest poet of the twentieth century in any language.” On December 13, 1971, Neruda took the podium in Stockholm to deliver an extraordinary acceptance speech, later included in [Nobel Lectures in Literature, 1968–1980]( ([public library](. He begins with a lyrical, almost cinematic recollection of his 1948 escape to Argentina through a mountain pass when Chile’s dictatorial government issued an order for his arrest on account of his extreme leftist politics — a long, trying journey which embodied for the poet “the necessary components for the making of the poem.” He recounts: [2e292385-dc1c-4cfe-b95e-845f6f98c2ec.png]Down there on those vast expanses in my native country, where I was taken by events which have already fallen into oblivion, one has to cross, and I was compelled to cross, the Andes to find the frontier of my country with Argentina. Great forests make these inaccessible areas like a tunnel through which our journey was secret and forbidden, with only the faintest signs to show us the way. There were no tracks and no paths, and I and my four companions, riding on horseback, pressed forward on our tortuous way, avoiding the obstacles set by huge trees, impassable rivers, immense cliffs and desolate expanses of snow, blindly seeking the quarter in which my own liberty lay. Those who were with me knew how to make their way forward between the dense leaves of the forest, but to feel safer they marked their route by slashing with their machetes here and there in the bark of the great trees, leaving tracks which they would follow back when they had left me alone with my destiny. Each of us made his way forward filled with this limitless solitude, with the green and white silence of trees and huge trailing plants and layers of soil laid down over centuries, among half-fallen tree trunks which suddenly appeared as fresh obstacles to bar our progress. We were in a dazzling and secret world of nature which at the same time was a growing menace of cold, snow and persecution. Everything became one: the solitude, the danger, the silence, and the urgency of my mission. Through this dangerous and harrowing journey, Neruda arrived at “an insight which the poet must learn through other people” — a profound understanding of the interconnectedness of each life with every other, echoing his [childhood revelation]( about the purpose of art. In consonance with the Lebanese-American poet and painter Kahlil Gibran’s [insight into why we create]( Neruda writes: [2e292385-dc1c-4cfe-b95e-845f6f98c2ec.png]There is no insurmountable solitude. All paths lead to the same goal: to convey to others what we are. And we must pass through solitude and difficulty, isolation and silence in order to reach forth to the enchanted place where we can dance our clumsy dance and sing our sorrowful song — but in this dance or in this song there are fulfilled the most ancient rites of our conscience in the awareness of being human and of believing in a common destiny. [pabloneruda_poetofthepeople2.jpg] Illustration by Julie Paschkis from [Pablo Neruda: Poet of the People]( by Monica Brown Echoing physicist Freeman Dyson’s meditation on [how our self-expatriation from history makes for a deep loneliness]( Neruda adds: [2e292385-dc1c-4cfe-b95e-845f6f98c2ec.png]Our original guiding stars are struggle and hope. But there is no such thing as a lone struggle, no such thing as a lone hope. In every human being are combined the most distant epochs, passivity, mistakes, sufferings, the pressing urgencies of our own time, the pace of history. He concludes with a vision for what it would take to let go of our damaging illusion of separateness and inhabit our shared humanity: [2e292385-dc1c-4cfe-b95e-845f6f98c2ec.png]It is today exactly one hundred years since an unhappy and brilliant poet, the most awesome of all despairing souls, wrote down this prophecy: “A l’aurore, armés d’une ardente patience, nous entrerons aux splendides Villes.” “In the dawn, armed with a burning patience, we shall enter the splendid Cities.” I believe in this prophecy of Rimbaud, the Visionary. I come from a dark region, from a land separated from all others by the steep contours of its geography. I was the most forlorn of poets and my poetry was provincial, oppressed and rainy. But always I had put my trust in man. I never lost hope. It is perhaps because of this that I have reached as far as I now have with my poetry and also with my banner. Lastly, I wish to say to the people of good will, to the workers, to the poets, that the whole future has been expressed in this line by Rimbaud: only with a burning patience can we conquer the splendid City which will give light, justice and dignity to all mankind. In this way the song will not have been sung in vain. Complement with Neruda’s [beautiful ode to silence]( and this lovely [picture-book about his life]( then revisit other timeless Nobel Prize acceptance speeches from great writers: Toni Morrison (the first black woman awarded the accolade) on [the power of language]( Bertrand Russell on [the four desires driving all human behavior]( Pearl S. Buck (the youngest woman to receive the Nobel Prize in literature) on [writing and the nature of creativity]( and Saul Bellow on [how art ennobles us](. [Forward to a friend]( Online]( [Like on Facebook]( [Water: A Stunning Celebration of the Element of Life Based on Indian Folklore]( [vyam_water.jpg?fit=320%2C381]( “Like all profound mysteries, it is so simple that it frightens me,” the Scottish poet and mountaineer Nan Shepherd wrote in contemplating [the might and mystery of water](. “Rivers run through our civilisations like strings through beads,” Olivia Laing observed nearly a century later as she launched [a lyrical existential expedition along a river](. Bertrand Russell, too, saw in rivers [a metaphor for how to live a fulfilling life](. For the Indian tribal artist Subhash Vyam, who grew up in a small Gond village without running water, wholly dependent on the mercy of nature, the water of rivers is not a metaphor — it is life itself, suspended between sanctity and survival. Vyam draws from his personal story a moving universal invitation to reflect on our relationship with water, as individuals and as a civilization, in the unusual, exquisitely illustrated book [Water]( ([public library]( — another treasure from the South Indian independent publisher [Tara Books]( devoted to giving voice to marginalized tribal art and literature through a commune of artists, writers, and designers collaborating on books handcrafted by local artisans in a fair-trade workshop in Chennai, producing such gems as [The Night Life of Trees]( [Drawing from the City]( [Creation]( and [Hope Is a Girl Selling Fruit](. Vyam’s story, translated into English from the Hindi oral narrative by Tara Books founder Gita Wolf, is part autobiography, part folkloric parable, part meditation on the most pressing geopolitical and ecological questions humanity is facing today — income inequality, sustainability, environmental justice, our responsibility to nature as citizens and as a species. [vyam_water1.jpg?resize=680%2C812]( Looking back from his current life as a migrant worker in the city, Vyam begins by recounting his early life in the village where he was born, at a time little more than “a cluster of houses”: [2e292385-dc1c-4cfe-b95e-845f6f98c2ec.png]We were poor and worked hard, but most people didn’t go hungry. We foraged in the forest, caught fish, kept cows and goats, and grew a few crops. We had enough to eat, provided the harvest was good. But we didn’t have money to spend, and we lived from one day to another. […] We had to work hard, but we had space and lived closely with trees, plants, animals and birds… and I think we understood their ways. But one crucial element continually darkened this hard-earned contentment: water. Without plumbing and a water source, the village was entirely dependent on rainfall — for putting food on the table by sowing and harvesting crops, for drinking, cooking, and bathing. They supplemented the rains with water from a lake a couple of kilometers away — the girls and women of the village would trek to it and carry the water home in enormous heavy vessels. Vyam sometimes accompanied his sisters on these expeditions, both trying and joyful in their way. He recounts: [2e292385-dc1c-4cfe-b95e-845f6f98c2ec.png]I remember how happy I was as a child when I took our cow to bathe in the lake. [vyam_water2.jpg?resize=680%2C810]( The summer months, when the lake dried up, were especially difficult — the girls and women would walk for hours to fetch a tiny bit of water, which would barely last a day before they had to set out again. Over the years, people in the village came up with ways of harnessing the water from the lake and the river that fed it. They dug small canals that led water to their fields. Eventually, the first well was dug — a momentous occasion for the village. [vyam_water3.jpg?resize=680%2C788]( Then the first hand-pump came: [2e292385-dc1c-4cfe-b95e-845f6f98c2ec.png]It seems like a small thing now, but it was a real boon for women. We didn’t have running water, but the government had dug a deep tube well, and now with a hand pump, even a small child could pump out water. It was like a miracle. When the first pump was installed, the whole village came out to watch, and all the children lined up for a turn at it. [vyam_water4.jpg?resize=680%2C810]( Around that time, Vyam migrated to the city to look for work. Although he earned more, he was still poor. He had relinquished the trees and the birds for a tiny flat which still suffered water shortages, not far from lavish mansions with lawns and swimming pools. He recounts: [2e292385-dc1c-4cfe-b95e-845f6f98c2ec.png]I discovered that you could buy water, if you had money. I never understood where this water came from. One day, Vyam received a troubled message from his mother, asking him to return home urgently. When he did, he found out that the village headman had made an important and confusing announcement about water — the government was planning on building a dam across the river that fed their little lake and flowed down their local hills. The dam would generate electricity for the city. Everyone in the village was filled with trepidation about what this would mean for their lives: If the river was blocked, water would go from being scarce to flooding their fields and their homes. Terrified and hurt by the injustice of the city’s greedy, unthinking plans for the river, Vyam was suddenly reminded of a folk tale his mother used to tell to the children when they complained about the daily task of fetching water. It is the story of seven sisters, dispatched by their parents to find water. After walking all day up and down hills, they finally came upon a lake — but it lay deep below them, unreachable. Witnessing their struggle and dejection, the lake took pity on them and made them an offer — it would rise up if they would give it their most precious possession. [vyam_water5.jpg?resize=680%2C808]( Willing do anything for water, the sisters agreed, and the youngest slipped a beautiful ring off her finger and threw into the lake below. The water promptly rose up, the sisters filled their pots, and left overjoyed. But just as they were heading home, the youngest sister began to cry, mourning her sacrificial ring. She wanted it back. Her sisters insisted that they had made a bargain with the lake and must honor their end, but there was no reasoning with her. She refused to walk. Unwilling to abandon her, the other six women reluctantly began looking for the ring. One by one, they climbed down into the water, waded into the dark, and disappeared, never to be seen again — the lake had swallowed them for having broken their promise. [vyam_water6.jpg?resize=680%2C810]( The mercilessness of the myth had always troubled Vyam as a child, and now he wondered why he had remembered it all these years later. From the vantage point of the present predicament — the village’s profound dependence on nature, the reckless greed of the rich and powerful in the city — he suddenly saw in it a new meaning. Echoing marine biologist, author, and pioneering conservationist Rachel Carson’s insistence that [“the real wealth of the Nation lies in the resources of the earth — soil, water, forests, minerals, and wildlife,”]( he reflects: [2e292385-dc1c-4cfe-b95e-845f6f98c2ec.png]We need nature — water, sun, air — to survive, but she doesn’t really need us. She is generous to us, but she has some conditions, and we have to respect them. The ring in the story stands for a bargain that the sisters made with the lake — a promise they then broke. When you go against a bargain and become greedy, nature punishes you, like the lake did with the sisters. Her laws are very strict. You can’t exceed your limits, or take more than what is due to you. [vyam_water7.jpg?resize=680%2C788]( With its dam plan, the city was taking more than its due — a microcosm of the larger civilizational greed that is savaging this [Pale Blue Dot](. Vyam ends the book with a gentle, heartfelt invitation for us to continually consider what it means to keep our bargain with nature, echoing Lewis Thomas’s beautiful long-ago meditation on [our human potential and our shared responsibility to the planet and to ourselves](. Complement Vyam’s gorgeous and timely [Water]( with [Waterlife]( — a complementary illustrated meditation on marine life based on Indian folklore — then revisit Rachel Carson on [the science of why water is blue]( and two hundred years of [literary meditations on the elemental color of our precious planet](. Illustrations courtesy of Tara Books [Forward to a friend]( Online]( [Like on Facebook]( donating=loving Each week of the past eleven years, I have poured tremendous time, thought, love, and resources into Brain Pickings, which remains free and is made possible by patronage. If you found any joy and stimulation here this year, please consider supporting my labor of love with a donation. And if you already donate, from the bottom of my heart: THANK YOU. monthly donation You can become a Sustaining Patron with a recurring monthly donation of your choosing, between a cup of tea and a Brooklyn lunch.  one-time donation Or you can become a Spontaneous Supporter with a one-time donation in any amount. [Start Now](  [Give Now](