Sarah Bakewell's Montaigne: how to live

Letter to Friend: Imparting the Advice of Montaigne

Sussex, England

Haverfordshire Estate

Dear Katharine:

It's been too long since our last meeting, though it was good to see you then and how quickly the afternoon passed. You were indeed a generous host; the ginger tea cakes you made were divine and the orange pekoe tea was a delightful treat. However, I as we were dining and coming up to speed with the current events in each other's lives, I could not shake the feeling that you were haunted by an unshakeable sadness. There was a profound and apparent melancholy which pervaded your actions and made it difficult for you to make eye contact with me. You spoke in a monotone fashion and often stared straight down into your teacup. You sighed frequently. I don't even think you were aware of doing it. It saddened me deeply to see you like that and I wondered if I should ask you about your present state. However, I feared putting you on the spot and I was afraid that you would despise me for doing so. I decided that I would write you a letter instead, expressing my dismay and sincere concern.

My darling Katharine: you've been a tremendous friend to me since we were little girls and I would be no friend to you if I turned my back pretended that all was fine with you. It clearly is not. You've clearly become consumed by a deep and debilitating depression. Your depression is of course understandable. You lost your younger sister, Lilly, nine months ago and still are clearly haunted by it. Lilly was a brilliant and charming little girl and her death in the boating pond was an absolute tragedy. It also wasn't your fault; you weren't even there. In fact, had you been there the tragedy still might have occurred, so you really should be grateful that you spared the experience. But Katharine, this isn't what I mean to say. Dearest Katharine, what concerns me even more than your apparent guilt over this death is the fact that you appear to be obsessed with death. Friends have told me that you've been plagued by nightmares where you envision relatives and dear contacts being consumed by raging fires or in floods. Your parents have told me that you find it more and more difficult to be alone, that you have extreme anxiety whenever anyone leaves you for a trip or an afternoon. Associates have told me that you speak heavily of morbid thoughts and questions, asking people which they think would be more painful, to have one's throat slit or to choke to death.

Dearest Katharine. It pains me to know that you've become so preoccupied with death. I find it absolutely understandable, yet at the same time, I'm incredibly concerned. I think I would be more relieved to hear that you were consumed with morbid thoughts about Lilly or preoccupied with talking and thinking about her. It appears as though you're harboring a fastidious obsession with death. Perhaps the words of the philosopher Montaigne will be of some comfort to you. He too, went through a period of his life where he was absolutely preoccupied with death and it was one of the most debilitating and destructive periods of his life: "He imagined the world closing around the hole where he had been: his possessions being gathered up, and his clothes distributed among friends and servants. These thoughts did not free him; they imprisoned him" (Bakewell). However, as author Sarah Bakewell is able to surmise, these thoughts eventually gave way to a remarkable lightheartedness as Montaigne ultimately concludes that death is nothing more than a few bad moments at the end of life and not valuable to exert any anxiety over. While Montaigne had the benefit of a near-death experience to allow him to draw the conclusion, I hope such a thing (however enlightening it might turn out) doesn't happen to you. I think you need only to trust in the words and actions of Montaigne, who found via his own near-death experience that "Your existence is attached by a thread; it rests only on the tip of your lips" (Bakewell). Essentially, as Bakewell summarizes, Montaigne did not feel that death was something that one could adequately prepare for; thus, there was no point in worrying about it. Worrying would not have prevented Lilly from dying. Worrying would have just made you an anxious older sister and perhaps put a strain on the precious bond that you and her had. Worrying about death and blaming yourself for past events that you had absolutely no control over are some of the most unproductive activities you could potentially hope to undertake. They're not healthy and they're not useful or practical.

Instead, dear Katharine, I challenge you to focus on how to live, as "life is more difficult than death; instead of passive surrender, it takes attention and management. It can also be more painful" (Bakewell). As Bakewell points out, while Montaigne's near-death experience was a light and passive thing, once he recovered from it, life slammed itself back into him with pain and abrasion: "His return to life was as violent as the accident: all jostlings, impacts, flashes, and thundercaps. Life thrust itself deeply into him, whereas death had been a light and superficial thing" (Bakewell). This is a truly powerful observation. Katharine, life is now demanding your time. The lives of your children and your husband demand your time and attention, as does the life of your collective household which bursts with energy and needs. You owe it to all the people around you that love you to make an active effort to rejoin the world and the human race of living, breathing people. Furthermore, Montaigne found some comfort in that his writing granted him a certain amount of immortality. You, Katharine will always have immortality through your children; this is one of the many reasons why it is so crucial that you must return to them, mentally and emotionally. They loved Lilly too and they need you to support and look after them; they need to be able to ask you questions about her death and share their fears. They need a mother who can still inquire about their day and take an interest in their young lives. This is above all else so terribly crucial. Your children see you slipping away, when in fact your children are the ones which can protect you against the cruelness of time and ordinary mortality. Come back to them.

I hope that coming back mentally and emotionally to your family will bring you a renewed sense of happiness and purpose in life. I believe that the more you pay attention to life as you're living it, the more joy and appreciation which will grow in you for life and all the possibilities it offers you. Montaigne stressed the importance of paying attention, close attention, to life. "The trick is to maintain naive amazement at each instant of experience" (Bakewell). While Montaigne was able to achieve this via writing, there's no reason why you should have to. You could find this amazement in spending time with your children, or in taking a walk around the garden or in playing with a friendly dog. The world is all around you and it is full of surprises and amazing instances. There is so much more to life than the drab room that I hear you're shutting yourself up in. The world needs you; it needs you gentle touch and your unique elegance. The world needs a person with your courage and your excitement, as well as your knowledge and your energy. The world needs a person like you making discoveries and appreciating the trifles and minutiae in which we are all surrounded, as no one will quite make the same discoveries as you or have quite the same amount of appreciation.

In engaging in these activities, I hope, my dear Katharine, you'll come to know yourself better. Not the self that you've evolved into, sad and full of suffering. Though the self you are now is in fact a beautiful creature, who has been touched and damaged by life, she is not the full and entire person that you are. I remember a Katharine who was peculiar and wild, who had a loud laugh and who could fill a room with her smile. I haven't seen that Katharine in such a long time, though I know in my heart she'll reappear with time.

When she does, I would like to impart with her the word of Montaigne: "If others examined themselves attentively, as I do, they would find themselves, as I do, full of inanity and nonsense. Get rid of it I cannot, without getting rid of myself. We are all steeped in it, one as much as the other, but those who are aware of it are a little better off -- though I don't know" (Bakewell). Katharine, what Montaigne means is that inanity which we human beings are full of is one of those things that makes life worth living. The absurdism and comedy in life and in each other are the things that make life so unique and so worthwhile. In returning to your life, your children, your family and friends, I feel you will be able to rediscover this absurdism, the silliness in yourself and in the people around you. I truly believe that is something which will help you to find joy once again in life, as you were someone who, in the past, appreciated jokes and the inane more than anyone else I knew.