The Stoic Way to Cope With Losing Someone You Love

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1:05Welcome to the weekend edition of the Daily Stoic Podcast. On Sundays, we take a deeper dive into these ancient topics with excerpts from the Stoic texts, audiobooks that we like here or recommend here at Daily Stoic, and other long-form wisdom that you can chew on on this relaxing weekend. We hope this helps shape your understanding of this philosophy, and most importantly, that you're able to apply it to your actual life. Thank you for listening.

1:44Hey, it's Ryan. Welcome to another episode of the Daily Stoic Podcast. As you know, my friend George Raveling died not too long ago. You know, I'd just gotten home. We'd just flown from California to Texas. I hadn't been on my phone, and I was actually just putting it on the charger, and like a bunch of texts came through, and it was news that he had passed. Now, obviously, this wasn't a surprise. He was 88. He'd been having some health problems. But actually, he just texted me not long before to say he felt like he was turning the corner and he was doing better. But obviously, this is life. This is also life being friends with people who are in their 80s.

2:24You know, they're not going to be there forever. Grief is real. I don't think the Stoics suppress it. I don't think the Stoics deal with loss without feeling or thinking. And in fact, some of Seneca's most beautiful essays are about grief. I've recommended them to many people over the years. and whenever I lose someone, I tend to go back and read them, which is why I wanted to bring you this letter from Seneca. His consolation essays are beautiful. We carry them at the painted porch in this edition. I think it's Seneca on Hardship. I'll link to that. You should definitely read them. They're quite beautiful.

2:59But in letter 67, he talks about remembering old friends and good times, both the sweetness and the pain of that. Nostalgia, loss, grief, sadness, it's all there. And Seneca is writing about it quite beautifully. This letter is part of Tim Ferriss's audio book, The Tao of Seneca, which is an audio collection of Seneca's letters. We've run a bunch of different episodes over the years. Seneca on death, Seneca on philosophy and friendship, Seneca on conquering the conqueror, Seneca on slavery, Seneca on withdrawing from the world, or not. I'll link to all those in today's show notes. But I thought this was a fitting one as I deal with a life where I won't get any more texts from my friend.

3:47And it's just kind of hitting me a little bit more each day that he's gone and really is gone. I'm glad and proud that we were able to do this book together. You know, he lives on in that way. If you don't know much about George. We did a sort of a best of episode about him a couple weeks ago. I'll link to that in today's show notes. But his book, What You're Made For, you know, it was a gift to get to participate in and to help make. And I think it captures the wonderfulness of him. And I think you'll really like it if you haven't read it already. But let's have Seneca help us out here.

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6:02On grief for lost friends. I am grieved to hear that your friend Flaccus is dead. But I would not have you sorrow more than is fitting. That you should not mourn at all, I shall hardly dare to insist. and yet I know that it is the better way. But what man will ever be so blessed with that ideal steadfastness of soul unless he has already risen far above the reach of fortune? Even such a man will be stung by an event like this, but it will be only a sting. We, however, may be forgiven for bursting into tears if only our tears have not flowed to excess and if we have checked them by our own efforts.

6:50Let not the eyes be dry when we have lost a friend, nor let them overflow. We may weep, but we must not wail. Do you think that the law which I lay down for you is harsh, when the greatest of Greek poets has extended the privilege of weeping to one day only, in the lines where he tells us that even Niobe took thought of food? Do you wish to know the reason for lamentations and excessive weeping? It is because we seek the proofs of our bereavement in our tears and do not give way to sorrow, but merely parade it. No man goes into mourning for his own sake. Shame on our ill-timed folly. There is an element of self-seeking even in our sorrow.

7:41What, you say, am I to forget my friend? It is surely a short-lived memory that you vouchsafe to him. if it is to endure only as long as your grief. Presently that brow of yours will be smoothed out in laughter by some circumstance, however casual. It is to a time no more distant than this that I put off the soothing of every regret, the quieting of even the bitterest grief. As soon as you cease to observe yourself, the picture of sorrow which you have contemplated will fade away. At present you are keeping watch over your own suffering. but even while you keep watch it slips away from you, and the sharper it is, the more speedily it comes to an end.

8:28Let us see to it that the recollection of those whom we have lost becomes a pleasant memory to us. No man reverts with pleasure to any subject which he will not be able to reflect upon without pain. So too it cannot but be that the names of those whom we have loved and lost come back to us with a sort of sting. But there is a pleasure even in this sting. For as my friend Atalus used to say, The remembrance of lost friends is pleasant, in the same way that certain fruits have an agreeably acid taste. Or as in extremely old wines, it is their very bitterness that pleases us. Indeed, after a certain lapse of time, Every thought that gave pain is quenched, and the pleasure comes to us unalloyed.

9:18If we take the word of Atalus for it. To think of friends who are alive and well is like enjoying a meal of cakes and honey. The recollection of friends who have passed away gives a pleasure that is not without a touch of bitterness. Yet who will deny that even these things, which are bitter and contain an element of sourness, do serve to arouse the stomach. For my part, I do not agree with him. To me, the thought of my dead friends is sweet and appealing, for I have had them as if I should one day lose them. I have lost them as if I have them still. Therefore, Leuchilius, act as befits your own serenity of mind and cease to put a wrong interpretation on the gifts of fortune.

10:11Fortune has taken away, but fortune has given. Let us greedily enjoy our friends, because we do not know how long this privilege will be ours. Let us think how often we shall leave them when we go upon distant journeys, and how often we shall fail to see them when we tarry together in the same place. We shall thus understand that we have lost too much of their time while they were alive. But will you tolerate men who are most careless of their friends, and then mourn them most objectively, and do not love anyone unless they have lost him? The reason why they lament too unrestrainedly at such times is that they are afraid, lest men doubt whether they really have loved.

10:58All too late they seek for proofs of their emotions. If we have other friends, we surely deserve ill at their hands and think ill of them, if they are of so little account that they fail to console us for the loss of one. If, on the other hand, we have no other friends, we have injured ourselves more than fortune has injured us, since fortune has robbed us of one friend, but we have robbed ourselves of every friend whom we have failed to make. Again, he who has been unable to love more than one has had none too much love even for that one. If a man who has lost his one and only tunic through robbery chooses to bewail his plight rather than look about him for some way to escape the cold or for something with which to cover his shoulders, would you not think him an utter fool?

11:52You have buried one whom you loved. Look about for someone to love. It is better to replace your friend than to weep for him. What I am about to add is, I know, a very hackneyed remark, but I shall not omit it simply because it is a common phrase. A man ends his grief by the mere passing of time, even if he has not ended it of his own accord. But the most shameful cure for sorrow, in the case of a sensible man, is to grow weary of sorrowing. I should prefer you to abandon grief rather than have grief abandon you. And you should stop grieving as soon as possible since even if you wish to do so, it is impossible to keep it up for a long time.

12:45Our forefathers have enacted that, in the case of women, a year should be the limit for mourning. Not that they needed to mourn for so long, but that they should mourn no longer. In the case of men, no rules are laid down because to mourn at all is not regarded as honorable. For all that, what woman can you show me of all the pathetic females that could scarcely be dragged away from the funeral pile or torn from the corpse, whose tears have lasted a whole month? Nothing becomes offensive so quickly as grief. When fresh, it finds someone to console it and attracts one or another to itself. But after becoming chronic, it is ridiculed and rightly, for it is either assumed or foolish.

13:35He who writes these words to you is no other than I, who wept so excessively for my dear friend Anais Serenus, that, in spite of my wishes, I must be included among the examples of men who have been overcome by grief. Today, however, I condemn this act of mine, and I understand that the reason why I lamented so greatly was chiefly that I had never imagined it possible for his death to precede mine. The only thought which occurred to my mind was that he was the younger and much younger too, as if the fates kept to the order of our ages. Therefore, let us continually think as much about our own mortality as about that of all those we love.

14:28In former days, I ought to have said, My friend Serenus is younger than I, but what does that matter? He would naturally die after me, but he may precede me. It was just because I did not do this that I was unprepared when fortune dealt me the sudden blow. Now is the time for you to reflect not only that all things are mortal, but also that their mortality is subject to no fixed law. Whatever can happen at any time can happen today. Let us therefore reflect, my beloved Lucilius, that we shall soon come to the goal which this friend, to our own sorrow has reached. And perhaps, if only the tale told by wise men is true, and there is a born to welcome us, then he whom we think we have lost has only been sent on ahead.

15:31Farewell.

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