Ever since I saw the movie Superman, as a child, I wanted to have a library like Lex Luthor. A rotunda with bookshelves for walls, and a sliding ladder...or at least a more modest version of it. Don't get me wrong, I never wanted to be a super villan. I never wanted to lob missles into the San Andreas Fault or anything like that. And like all kids at the time, I wished I had super powers and could fly around like Superman, But that library, it always seemed like something good in the clutches of evil. Like something that needed to be saved along with Lois Lane. And ever since, I've wanted one of my own.
There, on the shelf of the thrift store, was one of the books in what I later learned was a series known as "The Harvard Classics". 50 volumes of what it's publishers considered to be some of the greatest works of all time. It was volume II, and it consisted of some of the writings of Plato, the Golden Sayings of Epictetus, and the writings of the Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius (who I remembered from the movie Gladiator). Now, to be completely honest, I never really intended to actually read the book, I saw it, wanted it, and brought it home with me because it looked like the kind of book that would make a fitting start to a Lex Luthor library. It looked cool. To me it was more art than book. Something to be admired and not disturbed. But after a week of watching it sit on a shelf, curiosity got the best of me and I cracked it open. I started with Plato, Plato was over my head, so I moved on to Epictetus.
I came across these words "The other day I had an iron lamp…I heard a noise at the door and on hastening down found my lamp carried off…” In my mind I thought "I can't believe I'm sitting here reading from some guy who was complaining about his lamp being stolen...2,000 years ago! But I read on, and what I read impressed me. He next said " The reason why I lost my lamp was that the thief was superior to me in vigilance. He paid however this price for the lamp, that in exchange for it he consented to become a thief: in exchange for it, to become faithless." I sat there thinking about those words for what seemed like five minutes. I couldn't put my finger on why, but I found myself almost in awe of his words. I read on;
“No man is free who is not master of himself.”
“Exceed due measure, and the most delightful things become the least delightful.
“Even as the Sun doth not wait for prayers and incantations to rise, but shines forth and is welcomed by all: so thou also wait not for clapping of hands and shouts and praise to do thy duty; nay, do good of thine own accord, and thou wilt be loved like the Sun.”
“But what says Socrates?--"One man finds pleasure in improving his land, another his horses. My pleasure lies in seeing that I myself grow better day by day."
I was slowly waking up to the fact that although Epictetus lived thousands of years ago, he knew a lot more about life than I did. Somehow, I always thought that the further back in time you went, the dumber "man" was. Cave man vs. modern man. But, in fact, it now seemed that the only difference between them and us is time (and technology). But that we are otherwise, the same. And that in many respects (probably because of technology) they thought and reasoned more than we do. It seems that the seeds of life as I know it today were probably planted back then. And that perhaps the only other difference between them and us is that we live on the other side of the fruition of their ideas. They came up with political, ethical, and philosophic solutions to the problems of their time, those solutions were carried out (probably by others after them), and we now live comfortably on the other side, enjoying the fruits of their mental labors.
It later occurred to me (after the passing of my Grandmother) that while I was reading Epictetus, I was actually in a way sitting down to one of his lectures (I later learned he, a Greek living in Rome around 90 A.D., was a freed slave who ran a school of philosophy) I was having a sort of one sided conversation with him. And that books aren't just paper and ink, they are the thoughts of a man. I was reading the thoughts and wisdom of Epictetus. All the experiences of his long and difficult life led him to those conclusions. There, in my hand, was not a book, but a collection of ideas, not paper, but a mind (and it's hard earned wisdom). And just as we can choose to either learn from our own mistakes (what we call “the hard way”) or from the experiences of others (and thus avoid the hard way), When I read Epictetus I, in an incomplete but no less meaningful way, lived a bit of his life and learned from it, without having to do it “the hard way”. Without having to live his life. Some say it’s a shame reading takes so long, but living a life, and learning from it, takes much longer, and if we can live and learn from the whole of someone else’s life in a few hours or days, then it really doesn’t take long at all. “Anyone who says they have only one life to live must not know how to read a book.” - unknown. We can, in one lifetime, read a thousand books, and live a thousand lives!
At any time we can pull off the shelf the thoughts of Epictetus, Plato, Aristotle, Francis Bacon, or the founding fathers of this country. What a blessing that is, what an inheritance!
"How vast an estate it is that we came into as the intellectual heirs of all the watchers and searchers and thinkers and singers of the generations that are dead! What a heritage of stored wealth! What perishing poverty of mind we should be left in without it! -J.N. Larned
All this, however, brings up another question. What to read?
