The Consolations of Mortality

by Andrew Stark

  The disadvantage: once a new season starts, your championship in the previous season begins sinking into history, receding further and further into the past. Unlike boxing, where the champion can hold his title for as long as he remains undefeated, in high-school basketball, say, or in beauty contests, the champions automatically lose the title the following season without being defeated. Last year’s Miss America gives up the crown to this year’s without losing the contest to her. Likewise the members of last year’s victorious senior high-school basketball team. That championship season is immune to their death, but not to the passage of time.

  Other socially recognized triumphs, however, do not get set in amber at the cost of slipping ever further backward in time. They reverse the trade-off. They stay evergreen—they don’t slip backward in time—but at the cost of remaining at risk of being wiped off the books at any moment. While commentators refer to (say) Kimberly Aiken as Miss America 1994, or simply as a former Miss America—a beauty queen can win her title only once, and then it begins fading into the past—we do not similarly refer to Tom Hanks as a former best-actor Oscar winner, nor as the Oscar-winning best actor for 1994. We simply call him an Oscar-winning best actor in the present tense. In fact, journalists often refer to Hanks not just as an Oscar-winning best actor but as a two-time Oscar-winning best actor, since he took the statue home not just in 1994 but in 1993 as well. They do this because there are no limits on the number of Oscars a person may win. You can accumulate them, tote them up, for a lifetime score, a score over the duration. The game never ends, never begins receding into history. All of Hanks’s Oscars are still alive. Hanks is a two-time Oscar-winning best actor, top that!

  But there’s a price. His glory always remains tentative, never engraved in the past or set in amber but ever capable of being upset. Unlike Kimberly Aiken, from whom no one can take away her 1994 Miss America title, two-time best-actor Hanks always has to watch his back. An ever-present threat lurks that someone else—say, Daniel Day-Lewis, who in 2013 won his third best-actor Oscar—will “top that!”: will accumulate more statues. If the game or season is never over, then, in one sense, your lead in the game can always be snatched away. And you might die before you have the chance to regain it. Your triumphs are immune to the passage of time, but not to death.

  No one calls Kimberly Aiken a has-been as a beauty queen. Nor would anyone say, about the men of That Championship Season’s high-school basketball team, that they are has-beens as basketball players. That’s because they aren’t in the game anymore. But a top actor who hasn’t won an Oscar recently, or a professional quarterback who hasn’t won a championship lately? They get called has-beens on a regular basis. That’s because they’re still considered to be in the game, and every occasion on which they don’t win is considered a loss—as Steve Martin once made explicit when he referred to Meryl Streep’s two Oscars and fifteen subsequent nominations as two wins and fifteen losses. “And on the subject of slumps,” the St. Louis Post-Dispatch asked in 2011, “when the heck is Tom Hanks going to win another Oscar?”11

  Kimberly Aiken had no choice. According to the social templates of achievement in the realm of physical beauty, if you want to be a glamour queen you have to adopt the Holderlin strategy. You have to play just a single season, hoping it’s a glorious one as it was for her, since you can be Miss America only once, and early. Her 1993 success was set in amber though it’s hardly evergreen. Tom Hanks too, in a sense, has no choice. A Holderlin strategy is not an option for him. Sure, he might legitimately remain proud of his early success. But for the press and his fans, a single season in the career of a top actor does not a life make. Hanks is still considered to be in some kind of ongoing game, in which any success can continue to remain evergreen but is far from set in amber.

  Within bounds, though, most of us can choose whether to pursue or eschew the Holderlin strategy. Like a boxer, we can opt to play just a single season and retire as champ, but then watch as that moment of glory recedes into the past. Or we can stay in the ring to accumulate more knockouts—but then risk getting knocked out ourselves and losing the title. Either our accomplishments are secure, set in amber, but then they slip back in time, as with the Holderlin strategy—or else they remain currently relevant, evergreen, but also perpetually insecure, as with the lifelong game.

  That is why, for those who pursue the one strategy, the other will always beckon.

  Suppose, for example, that you adopted the Holderlin strategy. While still relatively young you won the U.S. Open in golf, and then decided to retire on a high note. No one can take that away from you. You gained hard-won laurels to rest on for the remainder of your life. But then you saw those laurels gradually dissolve into the past. You began to sense people thinking, “That was great, but what has he done lately?” What to do? You don’t want to risk getting back in the game.

  But that doesn’t mean that your game itself—the U.S. Open you won twenty years ago—can’t get back in the game. Maybe this year’s U.S. Open champ won his match by three strokes. But that’s nothing compared to yours, which you won twenty years ago by seven. Or maybe you won yours after the worst drizzle that ever softened a U.S. Open course. Then your championship game is itself still winning new games, triumphing over other championship games. After all, you’ve found a new ongoing contest in which it continues to reign supreme—still undefeated in the category of best score under postrainy conditions—even though you yourself have long since retired.

  Or think of a retired U.S. president (and in terms of strict protocol, he should no longer carry the title of “Mr. President,” even though that’s how we typically refer to him).12 Although satisfied with his place in the history books, with his championship season, he will have to watch it fade further and further into the past. And so he will begin to compare his presidency with that of his successors in a variety of novel games of his own devising, sending his presidential term out into new matches against theirs. Consider Bill Clinton, thirteen years after leaving office, favorably stacking his record on income inequality up against that of subsequent presidents.13 He aspires to set his presidency in amber, while at the same time keeping it evergreen—always entering new competitions, in which he continues to remain the reigning champion. Those who have adopted the Holderlin strategy, trying to shore up for themselves an early engraved-on-the-books victory—Bill Clinton was the third-youngest president—may find themselves restless, prospectively sending that victory out to accumulate fresh conquests in novel games with others.

  But the reverse syndrome is also evident: those who have rejected the Holderlin strategy, refusing to fade into history but instead struggling to rack up more and more points over time, may find themselves, toward the end, heading toward a life of overall loss. What to do? Perhaps they can reformulate or reframe one of the victories they scored earlier on, retrospectively elevating it to a single golden “championship season.”

  “Heh, heh,” the reggae star Shaggy chuckled in a 2001 interview with the Guardian; “Not bad at all. . . . I [may be only] the second biggest Jamaican artist [after Bob Marley, but] I’ve sold more records than Bob Marley did in the same space of time.” Shaggy was thinking of late 2000, when he had a hit album.14 He thus turned a losing strategy for a cumulative life-as-a-whole competition into a peak championship in a particular season, which he now attempts to preserve in amber as a special Holderlin moment, years ago.

  Donnie Evil, a musician hailing from Bozeman, Montana, is proud of having sold ten records, more than Kanye West did, at Bozeman’s Cactus Records in the week before Christmas 2010. “My life’s goal was to outsell Kanye at something,” Evil told the Bozeman Daily Chronicle. “Now I can die happy.” Kanye may have walloped Donnie in cumulative lifetime sales. But Donnie, sifting through his life, found his Holderlin moment.15

  Neither is pure—the strategy that favors the early triumph nor the one that favors the long haul. Each tugs you toward the other.

  A Strange Relationship
Between Happiness and Death

  Death can never harm us, Epicurus said. As long as we are here, death cannot be. And so it’s powerless to interfere with our enjoyment of the goods and pleasures of life. Then as soon as death does arrive, we will have already fled: no longer around to suffer whatever harm or evils it might entail. Throughout the entire process, there will never be a moment when death touches us.

  Sound vaguely familiar? This idea bears the same structure as another famous dictum. Known in the ancient world, it is now indelibly associated with Schopenhauer. We can never be happy, Schopenhauer said. As long as we have yet to possess the object of our desire—that boy or girl or beachfront property of our dreams—we will continue to feel the pain and anxiety of unrequited yearning and longing. We’ll be driven to distraction by lust or envy and by worries that our quest might fail. And yet as soon as we finally do get our hands on that object, we will discover that our desire for it has fled. The minute we possess it, it will begin losing its capacity to fulfill us, to bring us joy. Almost immediately it will start to bore us or satiate us. We will find fault with it and feel restless. Any fulfillment we reap will be ephemeral, fleeting. Throughout the entire process, there will never be a single moment when complete happiness descends on us.

  For Epicurus, when the self is here death isn’t; and when death is here the self isn’t. For Schopenhauer, when our desire is present the object isn’t, and when the object is here our desire isn’t. Which raises a question: Does our relationship with death, as Epicurus relates it, in some way mimic our relationship with happiness, as Schopenhauer sees it?

  Long before Schopenhauer, the Stoics had already discovered two passageways out of his vicious circle. First, even as you chase after the object of your desire—even while it still remains infuriatingly beyond your grasp—you could keep reminding yourself that if you do succeed in attaining it, any enjoyment you experience will be ephemeral, evanescent, fleeting. That will cool your jets, relieving some of the yearning and longing you feel even as your desire remains yet to be fulfilled. Second, you could, after you do attain the object of your desire, take measures to keep alive the yearning, aspiration, and ambition—the avid longing—that you felt prior to getting it. Doing so will keep you hot for it even while you have it, making your enjoyment of it more lasting than fleeting. You want to continue desiring your wife? Keep imagining her, the Stoics advised, in the arms of someone else.16

  What we seek, in seeking happiness, are those “gorgeous moments” when “the fulfilled future and the wistful past”—the cool disinterestedness we feel once we attain the object and the hot desire we felt when we were chasing it—“mingle.” So said F. Scott Fitzgerald. And he would know.17

  Suppose, then, that you do manage to bring some of the cooled-off feeling that comes with actually possessing an object into your mind as you are still desirously chasing it. And suppose too that you’re able to import some of the hot feelings you felt when you were desirously chasing it into your mind once you have it. Then, the Stoics advised, you can slow down or maybe even stop Schopenhauer’s treadmill. Possibly you can even attain those gorgeous moments of which Scott Fitzgerald spoke. And you will thereby find the Holderlin strategy easier to pursue. Once you have had your summer in the sun, you will feel less moved to pursue new desires. You’ll foresee how short-lived will be the enjoyment that results from fulfilling them. And you will remain happy with what you have, with that one glorious summer, because you’ll take measures to keep alive the pangs of desire you felt for it when it was but a dream lying in the future.

  I can’t say whether this Stoic strategy for happiness will work for you. It’s obviously an individual thing. What I do want to suggest, and it’s only a speculative suggestion, is this: to the extent that the Stoic recipe for happiness does work for you, then the Epicurean consolation for death is less likely to.

  For many of us, Epicurus’s break between our selves and our death—as long as we are here death isn’t, and then as soon as death is here we are not—remains too clean and sharp. Our self and its death do meet, at least in a couple of ways.

  First, and most obviously, we cannot help but bring a sense of the poignant ephemerality that death portends for us into our mental state well before we die. Though we remain very much alive, we are all too painfully aware of the personal evanescence that our death signifies. And so death is hauntingly present, in our minds if not as an actual fact in the world, even while our selves are still here.

  Second, our self’s longings and yearnings inevitably extend to facts that will occur in the world well after we die. Will our longing that our grandchild marry her lover and have kids be realized? Will our yearning that Venice not sink into the sea, and the decades of effort we expended on that project, bear fruit? Death makes it impossible for us any longer to enjoy, or ensure the realization of, our self’s dearest hopes and wishes.

  Epicurus is refuted then: psychologically if not logically. As long as we bring a sense of ephemerality—the ephemerality that death inevitably delivers—into our minds even before we die, and extend our longings to events that will occur in the period after we die, death and our selves will, painfully, overlap. But likewise so is Schopenhauer refuted. As long as we bring a sense of ephemerality—the ephemerality of fulfillment that a desired object will inevitably deliver—into our minds even before we attain it, and extend our longing for that object into the period after we attain it, then we can be happy. So advised the Stoics.

  To the extent that we develop a keen and ever-present sense of evanescence and ephemerality, and robust and durable yearnings and longings, we will lament death. But we will also find some measure of (Stoic) happiness. Maybe our capacity for happiness and our sadness about death are connected at some deep level. Or at least the kind of happiness that Holderlin strategists seek after summer’s gone.18

  That Championship Season

  Now let’s say you’ve got off on the right track for a Holderlin strategy. You’ve scored a big triumph early on, and you can then rest on your laurels. Or put it another way: in terms of Epicurus’s second consolation your life is now over, in the sense that the narrative arc of your accomplishments has been inscribed safely on the books. It’s incapable henceforth of being interrupted or effaced by your demise. Once death comes not only will you, your self, have already left the building, as Epicurus says. Your life, too, in the most crucial sense will have long since been wrapped up. Death won’t be able to touch it, to play havoc with it. That’s the great advantage of the Holderlin strategy.

  But remember: the Holderlin strategy also comes with a disadvantage—one that threatens to creep into your posttriumph period. You might have won the Masters this year. But this year will become last year, then the year before last, then . . . won’t you eventually begin to ask yourself, “Great, but what did I do for me lately?” Doesn’t that championship season, or summer of the gods, or moment when we were kings, necessarily begin to recede back in time to the point where, after we’ve been dining out on it for a few years, it would no longer sustain us as it vanishes over the horizon into the past?

  No, maybe not necessarily. Think again of the difference between a self and a life. Think of the image of your self—of you—as a jogger, running along the course of your life, whose extension in time is represented by a race track that stretches out in space. The first ten miles correspond to your childhood, the next ten to your adolescence, and so on.

  J. David Velleman, whom I discussed in the previous chapter, imagines what it would mean if, instead of running along the course of your life, your self was also stretched out in time right alongside it. If you could see things that way, Velleman argues, then you would avoid the feeling that you were steadily jogging toward your death. Instead, each part of your self would simply focus on whatever part of your life coincided with it, and death would remain completely out of the picture. If you adopted his strategy, Velleman says, then you could more fully avail yourself of Epicurus’s first c
onsolation: as long as your self is here, death can’t be. It would be wholly irrelevant.

  Now think of the Holderlin strategy—the strategy of getting your accomplishments done early and thus gaining psychic access to Epicurus’s second consolation: once death comes, nothing of you will be around to be harmed by it. Begin again with the image of yourself running the course of your life. But this time, imagine each mile in the race course of your life, as you run through it, getting up and beginning to trot right alongside of your self. That high-school championship season doesn’t remain behind. It jogs abreast of you in lockstep. It endures just as you do.

  On this image, that graven-on-the-record period of your life becomes invulnerable not just to your death but even to the passage of time. Your completed and hermetically sealed moment of glory keeps you company apace, and your self can happily trundle on with it close as ever. That championship season needn’t recede into the past after all. Not only is it set in amber—no one can dispute the record—but it’s also evergreen, so that you need not ask yourself, “What have I done for me lately?” It’s as fulfilling to you now as it was when it happened. You will feel no gnawing impetus to seek more triumphs, getting back into the arena where death waits to foil you and interrupt your plans. Your over-and-done life will continue to live on with you. You can then gain the fullest possible psychological access to Epicurus’s second consolation: once death comes, both you and your life will lie beyond its clutches.

  Is this possible—and if so, how?

  In one of the more profound moments on The Simpsons, a successful pushcart vendor named Frank recalls how he had once mistakenly believed that he was unsuited for the business of street hawking. That was “the old me,” Frank says, “which was, ironically, the young me.” It’s a deep remark. Why do we refer to the time of Socrates and Aristotle as the Age of Antiquity, when in fact civilization was in its infancy then? Why, as Francis Bacon asked, don’t we instead think of our own contemporary time as “the true antiquity . . . inasmuch as it is a more advanced age of the world, and stored and stocked with infinite experiments and observations?”19