Breakfast with Seneca: A Stoic Guide to the Art of Living

CHAPTER 12

Give Grief Its Due

Tears fall no matter how we try to hold them back, and shedding them relieves the mind.

—Seneca, Letters 99.15

LET THE TEARS FLOW

The early Greek Stoics held an unusually harsh and strange theory: if a Stoic sage or wise person lost a close friend to death, he would not weep over his friend’s death because such emotions would originate from false opinions. Seneca rejected this view strongly and thought that tears of grief are wholly appropriate. He wrote, “I know that some men can be found whose wisdom is harsh rather than brave who say that a sage will never feel grief,” which he found to be inhuman.1 Elsewhere Seneca wrote, “I do not remove the sage from the general category of mankind, nor do I deny him a sense of pain as if he were some kind of rock with no feelings at all.”2

For Seneca, the tears we experience when we lose a loved one do not come from faulty judgments. They are the result of natural human feelings at the deepest level of our being. In other words, they are instinctual. In one of his letters, Seneca explains how he wept over the death of a close friend. It’s quite safe to assume that Seneca also wept over the death of his only child, a baby who died only twenty days before Seneca was banished to the island of Corsica by the Emperor Claudius. He describes the child dying in the arms of its grandmother—Seneca’s mother, Helvia—as she showered the baby with kisses. Marcus Aurelius also lost many children to death, and he is known to have wept in public over the death of his friends.

Seneca believed that when we weep, it’s just a natural, physiological response, a natural human feeling (see chapter 4). Because grief and weeping are instinctual, they’re not based on faulty beliefs or judgments as negative emotions are. Seneca was well aware that even animals mourn the loss of their offspring. Mother birds experience distress if they return to their nest and discover a missing egg. Even on an interspecies level, dogs often mourn the loss of a beloved master when that person passes away, in the same way people mourn the loss of a pet.

Seneca took grief seriously. In fact, he wrote five separate works consoling friends and family members who had lost loved ones.3 And in these works, he offers us valuable advice about how to grieve well, how to lessen the sting of grief before it appears, and how to transform grief into something better—happy memories of those we have lost.

Seneca’s basic approach to grief is that we should give grief its due. In other words, we should allow our natural tears to flow freely, but never force them, and never make our grief appear to be more intense just because we are in the presence of others.

For Seneca, there are different kinds of tears. Tears of shock occur when we first learn of the bitter loss of a loved one and when we see his or her lifeless body, perhaps at a funeral. We have no control over these tears. It’s as if they are pushed out of us by nature itself, as the pain of grief causes a person to gasp deeply and shakes the entire body. These kinds of tears are involuntary and beyond our control.4

Another kind of tears, which we might call tears of joy, appear when we sweetly remember someone we’ve lost. We think of the person’s pleasant voice, the happy conversations we once had, and his or her noteworthy actions. Unlike the harsher tears of shock, these fears are not forced on us, beyond our will, but spring from the happy and sweet memories we recall.5

Sometimes, even for a Stoic sage, tears sometimes just well up on their own. When this happens, it’s not a negative emotion but simply a mark of a person’s humanity. Similarly, Seneca points out, it’s possible to experience tears when one feels tranquil and at peace.6

FINDING A GOLDEN MEAN

Don’t let your eyes be dry when you have lost a friend, and don’t let them overflow. We may weep, but we must not wail.

—Seneca, Letters 63.1

Even grieving has its own kind of moderation.

—Seneca, Consolation to Marcia 3.4

For Seneca, because we’re human beings who are deeply bonded with those we love, it’s only natural that we will feel grief and shed tears at losing a loved one. It’s cathartic too. All that grief cannot be held inside; it needs to be released. Crying is a complex phenomenon, and is not fully understood. But on one level, we now know that crying releases oxytocin and endorphins. These chemicals help to relieve pain and, as mood enhancers, make people feel better and calm.7

Seneca had no problem with grief and falling tears, as long as they remained genuine or natural. But some people increase their grief beyond what nature requires. And some people push their grief to the point of madness. For example, little is known about Marcia, the first person Seneca ever wrote to, helping her to overcome her grief. But Seneca wrote to her because she was still in a deep state of despair over losing her son, who had died three years earlier. While Seneca believed that Marcia possessed courage and a strong character, he felt that she had kept the initial shock of her grief alive to the point where it had hardened into a severe kind of illness. As he put it, “You hug and hold onto your grief, keeping it alive in place of your son.”8

Seneca believed that we should seek some kind of moderation in grief and that it’s unnatural for extreme grief to be prolonged for lengthy periods. Seneca also objected to how people sometimes make their grief appear to be worse than it is when displaying it in public. As he told Lucilius, let’s allow our tears to flow, “but not compel them to do so. Let us weep according to our real emotion, but not in imitating others. Let’s not add anything to our real mourning, or make it greater by copying the example of others. The public display of grief demands more than genuine grief requires.”9

Seneca noted that, when surrounded by others, people often lament more loudly, so others can hear them. But once the onlookers depart, their own grief declines, since it’s no longer on show. Since Seneca valued authenticity, he believed that our sorrow should be genuine, or based on what we and nature require. It should never become a form of acting in front of an audience.

Because of this, Seneca sought a kind of moderation in grief. We don’t want our grief to be lacking in love or genuine feeling, but we don’t want it to become a form of acting—or, even worse, to resemble a form of madness. When we’ve lost someone close to us, being overwhelmed continuously by grief can become an unhealthy form of self-indulgence. Alternatively, feeling no sorrow would be insensitive and inhumane. Even in grief, we should seek a balance between reason and genuine affection.10 As Seneca recommends to his friend Polybius, who lost his brother,

Let reason maintain a mean that doesn’t resemble a lack of love or a kind of madness, and let it keep us in a state of mind that is caring but not anguished. Let your tears flow, but also let them stop. Let sighs be drawn from your deepest breast, but also let them find an end. Govern your mind so that you may win approval both from the wise and from your own family.11

In the end, it’s natural that grief will dissipate given time. But it’s even better if we can grow out of grief, rather than just grow weary of it. As Seneca advised Lucilius, “It’s better that you abandon grief, rather than have grief abandon you.”12

REDUCING THE SHOCK OF GRIEF

Does anyone weep over something he knew to be inevitable? To complain that someone has died is to complain that person was mortal.

—Seneca, Letters 99.8

It isn’t possible to prevent grief from arising when we lose a loved one. But it is possible to minimize the shock of grief by realizing in advance that everyone we know is mortal and that, one day, our paths will part for good. Seneca went so far as to suggest that when someone gives birth to a child, it’s good to think, “I have given birth to a mortal.”13 Rather than being a heartless thought, it’s just a truth about human nature.

Knowing that someone is in the process of dying reduces the shock or surprise of losing them dramatically. When I was twenty-seven, my dad, who had led a remarkable life, was hospitalized. It was also clear that his end was near. About a month later, he died, on December 31. As I used to say, “He went out with the old year.” If he had lived just six more days, he would have been seventy-five years old. At the time, I experienced a deep sense of grief. But since everyone was expecting his demise, the initial shock was far less intense than it would have been if he had simply died with no warning.

As Seneca notes, “Those who anticipate the coming of suffering remove its force when it arrives.”14 It’s difficult, though, to imagine that those who are young, in the prime of life, or even much younger than us, might suddenly die at any moment. That’s why it’s helpful to remind ourselves from time to time that it could take place. Even Seneca failed to follow his own advice about this with his close friend Annaeus Serenus, who died at a young age. As Seneca confided to Lucilius, “I wept so excessively for my dear friend.” That’s because Serenus was so much younger, and, as Seneca said, “I had never imagined it possible for his death to precede mine.” He concluded, “Let us continually think as much about our own mortality as about all of those we love. . . . Whatever can happen at any time can happen today.”15

One of my favorite Stoic ideas is that everything we have, or believe that we possess, is just “on loan” from the universe. Everything. And one day, all those things will need to be returned. Seneca brings this up in his message to Marcia, who was still experiencing extreme grief over the death of her son, as though it had just happened yesterday. Seneca tells Marcia that “All the extraordinary things that glitter around us,” including children, honors, wealth, and everything that depends on uncertain chance, “do not belong to us but are only on loan.”16 Not one of them is a permanent gift. Seneca explains further,

We must love them with the awareness that we have no promise we will have them forever, nor any promise we will have them for long. We must remind ourselves often that we should love things as if they are sure to leave us, or that they are leaving already. Take what Fortune gives, but realize that it comes with no guarantee.17

Epictetus said, “Never say that ‘I have lost something’; only say, ‘I have given it back’”—even if that is a loved one.18 As Seneca wrote to Polybius, when his brother died, “Let us take joy in what is given to us and let us return it when we are asked.”19 Seneca explained elsewhere that someone who views the world correctly will realize that all his property, and even his life, is a temporary gift of Fortune. He’ll then live as if everything were on loan, and he’ll be prepared to return those gifts without sorrow when the universe finally reclaims them.20

Some readers have wrongly assumed that the Stoics were advocating emotional detachment from those around them by thinking in this way. But nothing could be further from the truth. Knowing that nothing is permanent is just accepting a fact of nature. It has nothing to do with a person’s ability to love deeply. Realizing that my loved ones are all impermanent encourages me to treasure them more deeply. It makes me even more grateful for the limited time we have together.21

TURNING GRIEF INTO GRATITUDE

Keep remembering but cease to grieve.

—Seneca, Letters 99.24

Don’t complain about what was taken away, but give thanks for what you were given.

—Seneca, Consolation to Marcia 12.2

Seneca has the most brilliant strategy for dispelling grief over the long term. When we lose a loved one, we will certainly grieve for a period. But as that grief begins to fade, we can replace those sad feelings with happy and joyful memories.

Seneca’s profound insight is that grief, in a way, is selfish and lacking in gratitude for our loved ones. Rather than being ungrateful and sad, let us be grateful for the wonderful experiences we’ve had together. As he wrote to a friend who lost an infant son, “Many people do not count how many great blessings they’ve received and how much joy they’ve experienced. That is just one reason why your kind of grief is bad: not only is it needless, it is ungrateful too.”22

He continues,

Do you bury a friendship along with the friend? And why would you mourn him as if he didn’t benefit you? Believe me: a large part of those we have loved remains with us, even if chance has removed them. The time that has passed is ours to keep, and nothing is safer than that which was.23

Seneca is correct that grief, given time, can be replaced by happy memories. For several years after my father died, I’d feel some seasonal sadness around the time of his death, at the end of each year. It’s like there was an empty space where he was supposed to be. Many others who have lost family members have experienced this kind of seasonal sadness too. But that was a long time ago. When I look back at my dad or even his death today, I now feel no grief at all—just a sense of happiness, and a sense of gratitude, for the time we spent together. But when a person’s mind is filled with grief and sadness, it’s hard to make space for the happy memories and gratitude that would more deeply honor a loved one. Being able to replace grief with gratitude is not just possible; it’s crucial for living a happy life.

Seneca says this applies even to people who have lost little children. Their memory can still bring us joy, even if their lives were short. As Seneca tells Marcia, “Your son deserves to make you happy each time you think of him, each time you mention his name—and you will honor him more greatly if you greet his memory cheerfully and with joy, as he used to be greeted while still alive.”24 Rather than grieve, Seneca says, remember all the happy times you spent with your son, and “his boyish, loving caresses.”25