Why Worry

Sunday, February 22, 2015

Murrow.  Murrowww.  A calico cat stares at me. I am her God of food.  Murrow Murrowww is a cat prayer; she is offering up her plea, her desire is that I trek to the basement and put some food in her bowl. The persistence of the petitioner may also mean that she wants me to refill the water dish.  

McCoy Tyner is playing “Summertime” on the radio.  Summertime?  It is anything but.  While it is 40 degrees warmer than it was two days ago at this hour the temperature outside is just 26 degrees F.  Nothing is moving very much as I look out the bay window.  The relative stillness means there are no wind chill worries.  26 F doesn’t mean much if the wind is at a sustained 20-30 m.p.h.

I have been up for an hour.  It was dark when I came down to get the car warmed up for my wife and son. On this early Sunday morning they are off to an all-day robotics event at the university. Time has passed, they are gone and light has returned to the sky but it is a grey, grey day.  Snow flakes, large ones that take their time as they find their way to the ground making leisurely circles shifting ever so lightly this way and that.

Coffee is brewed and awaits the pouring of the first cup.  Bacon is in the oven at 400 F heading for perfection.  When those slices of dead cured porker are done that will be combined with a poached egg on an Asiago cheese bagel.  The oven is adding its notes to this morning’s symphony.  Beep, beep, beep.  Time to turn the bacon and give it another ten minutes.  Once I have turned those strips that I will respond to the murrows and go check out the feline food situation. 

The music has segued into a quiet reflective piece with a strong bass line.  It sounds like the kind of bass Eddie Gomez played back when he was working with Bill Evans.  Who knows this might be Bill Evans.

(Break)

The cats are fed.  My coffee cup is filled with dirty brown water and another piano based jazz tune is playing in the background.  With my youngest not yet awake I have time to write before he commandeers my computer. Fingers align properly on the qwerty keyboard and I continue.

Yesterday I went to my office even though it was a Saturday.  Tomorrow, Monday we will be migrating to a new computer system.  My why for going in is that I had a couple pieces of work that I did not want to get lost in the process.  Invariably when the IT guys come in and promise to “move everything over to the new machine” tons of stuff ends up just simply gone. When I had gotten what I needed done on my computer I pulled a volume off my desk and commenced to read.  

The first piece I came upon was from the Greek philosopher Epicurus.  Epicurus was an interesting figure.  He was one of the earliest proponents of the scientific method. His philosophy was influential. 

To quote the Wiki on him “For Epicurus, the purpose of philosophy was to attain the happy, tranquil life, characterized by ataraxia—peace and freedom from fear—and aponia—the absence of pain—and by living a self-sufficient life surrounded by friends. He taught that pleasure and pain are the measures of what is good and evil; death is the end of both body and soul and thus should not be feared; the gods neither reward nor punish humans; the universe is infinite and eternal; and events in the world are ultimately based on the motions and interactions of atoms moving in empty space.” Kind of nice approach to the world, truth is beauty and the like.  

Epicurus was also a proponent of the ethics of reciprocity.  What is that you say?  Well the ethics of reciprocity posits, “One should treat others as one would like others to treat oneself and one should not treat others in ways that one would not like to be treated.” It is the golden rule with an imperative to not act as an ass to someone else.  I kind of like it.

I had read some Epicurus in college and with a couple of minutes of down time I figured what the heck let me refresh my mind on his thoughts.  (As a side note it seems kind of bizarre to me is that a modern drug maker would take Epicurius’s talking point and brand a sedative with it.  Atarax is one of those bliss drugs you get when things need to be made peaceful and when you need your fears allayed.)

I digress.  There was a quote in the text which struck me as interesting:  

“So death, the most terrifying of all ills, is nothing to us, since so long as we exist, death is not with us; but when death comes, then we do not exist.  It does not then concern either the living or the dead, since for the former it is not, and the latter are no more.” 

Even if you don’t buy it completely it is an interesting starting point for thought.  Why worry about your end?  If you have breath then death is not here yet.  If you are dead well the game is over and you are no more. I mean I was not in some Thanatos focused moment when I opened the volume but a quote like that gets you thinking.