“I’ve always been told that… well nothing, nobody told me nothing. I got here to where I am, and nobody told me nothing!” I grumbled; laid back my back again, gazed at Virgil’s stupid understanding face, and then I realized – I was pissed. I’ve noticed that my chair though straight, was bent against me and my wish for comfort. Perhaps it was jealous of my sentience, or perhaps it was never meant for sitting on at all, it may have been a chair only to look at, like these Egyptian rugs my mom has grown so addicted to over the years. This chair, it seemed so nice at first, especially from the outside of this preachy coffee place, but little did I know it was handmade by the devil himself. Again, I’m exaggerating, I doubt it was the devil. In all likelihood, it was God’s work – perhaps in the same product line as that Genesis’ fruit. Though this chair did not seem to grant me any special powers, the punishment for choosing to sit in it was disproportionally severe.
I drank another sip of coke. Virgil was already readying his response, relaxing the eyebrows so their upper tip could flawlessly make their way up his forehead. I could already hear his humming of tenderness and sympathy, that longer than natural “Mmmmm…” sound which can serve as the emotional answer to anything, because it’s a noise containing neither content nor hint of moral liability. Before I could let him cover me with emotion, I continued: “Can’t they make life start off with more direction… a guide? Even those idiotic video games give you a tutorial… a rulebook of some kind… but this here, life, nothing. The most important game of all, and you get nothing, you just press play and hope not to die–”
“I get your point” Virgil introjected before I could continue my unmeditated unmediated rant, “but I mean you do get some rulebook, a few in fact, so you are not completely lost…”
“What do you mean by some rulebooks? Life has no rulebook, that’s the problem!”
“Well, I beg to differ”, grinning, “You got plenty to choose from: The Holy Bible for one, you have the original ‘old-school’ testament, and though it’s true it’s not the shortest reading, it does compact some marvelous fables, well, for at least 50% of the time, you just need to know where to look. Then there’s the newer 2.0 version of it, which I hear is also very popular today…”, even his teeth were amused, “You even have an orient-inspired version which comes with just the nicest covers…”
“The Koran? Really? You see me converting anytime soon? True, I haven’t exactly been trimming my beard recently, and well, there is my unhealthy relationship with shawarma, but still, do you really think a keffiyeh will suit me? Also, I don’t know if you’ve been paying attention, but both the new and old testaments are from the orient.”
“Okay okay, I’m just saying, you have tons of other options, just take your pick. If monotheism isn’t your cup of tea, well you can try some “eastern ‘tea,’” his smile grew as he gestured for air quotes with both hands. Seeing I was not smiling back he continued unbothered: “You know Lao-tze, and his friend, Siddarahta, AKA the Buddha?”
“How can I not, you wouldn’t stop talking about them ever since you went on that 2-day retreat.”
“It was 3 days! And don’t forget, this was a silent retreat, you would be surprised how much you can learn…”. He must have noticed my signs of impatience at hearing another meditation story, as he immediately resumed his primary monologue. Using his excessively playful, almost theatrical voice, reminiscent of his middle school persona, “you also have some super clever Greek philosophers… Aristoteles, Epicurus, Epictetus. None of them were religious, or at least not exclusively, and let me tell you, some of them were really enlightened fellows, you’d love them! If you prefer something more, uhm, recent, I personally love the psychoanalysts; they really make you think. But if you are not interested to drill down to the core of your soul by the internal exploration of your unconscious, you can just go to the self-help section in the corner book shop here. I’m sure a combination of quick success secrets, endless self-love, and mindful mambo-jambo could be the perfect cocktail mix you are missing in your life…” Virgil was never one to hide his excitement, it became clear how he enjoyed playing these pseudo-intellectual games. More than usual, his self-congratulatory hubris was showing, given that his speech contained more than the obligatory 1 to 2 half-relevant namedropped references.
Seeing he was giving me time to respond, I did: “I do appreciate that you are trying to help, I really do. But from all that you mentioned, I doubt any of them can provide me with anything truly useful, or at least, usefully true?… you know? I mean, from my, granted, limited experience reading these friends of yours, it always seems like if they offer some form of value it almost always presupposes some other host of unreasonable assumptions. Even if there is a trace of logical coherence, the end result is so divorced from daily reality, it is never… implementable. Is it too much to ask, for someone to provide a reasonable, virtuous path forward? A way that is both rational and life-affirming? Don’t tell me that you don’t find yourself reading these religious texts-”
“These are not only religio– “ Virgil burst, I continued.
“…these texts, however you’d like to call them, require one to take insane leaps of faith and logic. To believe any of them would require me to basically say goodbye to my basic sense of perception, coherence, or common-sense morality. Forgetting everything I know to be true, or approximating truth. When it comes to the continuous accumulation of valid scientific inquiry, my roots run deep: my beliefs are all, as much as they can be, evidence based. These thinkers require to sacrifice so much, for what? In the name of some form of a ‘better life’ which is not even guaranteed? Assuming I am even willing to consider one of these paths, I sincerely doubt any of them can offer anything meaningfully sustainable.
“You know just as well as I do, the monotheistic religions are saturated with dogma, their knowledge schemes are based on a worldview that is absolutely irreconcilable with any scientific-empirical understanding of how things operate in reality. Take the example of the never-ending attempts to reinterpret the biblical texts, observing its stories literally in one part, only to argue the other as metaphoric, how truly convenient. More often than not, these are post-hoc rationalizations, just like you explain that re-watching “who killed roger rabbit” helped you pass your exam on the criminal justice system. I too can justify any form of morality or ethics with these texts, there’s simply enough material and ambiguity to make almost anything there match your deterministically…” I hesitated, my eyes involuntary began searching up, as if in these skies of gray melancholy, I’ll find the precise words I’ve lost, “…determined… yes that’s it. Using these texts, anything can match your deterministically determined, historical, socialized, internalized worldview.” Looking back at him, wondering if I used one too many adjectives. Not wanting to expose any more uncertainty, I gave a half reluctant smile, and took another sip of my coke.
As Virgil’s plate arrived, I only glimpsed at the passing long black arms, not investing effort in the unnecessary memorization of the waiter’s face. Virgil, in contrast, greeted him politely, thanking him with a smile that was several millimeters too wide, considering this person was getting paid for the food he just brough to our table, “Well your criticism, though has truth in it, may applied more generally to most great works of literature and philosophy. And personally, in practice, more than your words, your manifested behavioral conclusion seems to be wrong, almost pathologically wrong. You are an ass…” I raised my eyebrows, Virgil continued, “I mean Buridan’s ass, a metaphorical donkey”.
“I’m not following, you literal schmuck”.
“Ohh come on, don’t take to personally… Buridan’s ass is a paradox, a parable. It tells the story of a donkey who is standing exactly in the middle of two equally distant, equally sizeable stacks of hay. Assuming the ass will always go to the closer pile, it is left there unable to choose until it eventually dies of hunger.”
“I don’t want the closest pile, I want the best one at hand”
“All the same, you criticize all religious paths so definitively and globally. By not delving to any one direction deeply enough, you will always lack the ability to decide on any each way. If you don’t choose a path, any path, you will soon find yourself starved to death between two or more, equally distant, wonderfully nutritious stacks of hay.” Unsure if the hay in his analogy signified meaning or well-being or something-else together, I was surprisingly occupied with the realization Virgil has never spent more than a week outside a major city. This parable, more than anything else, illustrated his clear lack of agricultural experience – as long as they can reach it, asses will eat anything.
“As for these texts, you should not let others’ use of them, for good or ill, blind you to their actual worth. Trust me, they are much more valuable and, dare I say, profound, than you realize. Sure they can sometimes feel… ‘outdated’, here and there, but I mean they have survived the test of time, there is a reason they continue to be read everywhere, there is something to them, inherently, which you seem to dismiss so quickly… I am not making the case you should believe in God or adhere to any specific practice; I just think you better keep your mind open…especially considering your… circumstances,” I was instantly hit with a major blow of annoyance throughout my upper-chest and head, my conscious mind still unable to process the reason for why this term, more than anything Virgil has said so far, has caused me such a significant neurochemical disruption. Before I could respond, he persisted in his self-appointed mission to save my soul: “what about the ancient Greeks? And the eastern philosophies? They seem quite promising, don’t you think?”
I took a moment and said, “If by Greeks, you are referring to the stoics in particular, then yes, I’ll grant you that they are delightfully readable, I remember encountering more than once some useful quotes. Yes yes, I remember something along the lines of: ‘we should not fear death because when we are alive, death is not present, and when it does finally come, we are no longer there to encounter it.’ That’s some good quotes, really Instagram hashtag-worthy material right there. Still, living as a stoic, truly living like a stoic, seems just outright… unenjoyable, let alone feasible. Hell, I’m not sure how many of them even lived up according to their own maxims…”
Virgil, swiveling and slurping his alfredo swamped spaghetti, widened his eyes, began chewing aggressively, and asked, “and East?”, only then was he able to swallow successfully.
“Well, these are also tricky, as so much of what I know about these philosophies is from watered-down versions of them, badly translated and often lacking any original substance… It’s like, I can’t even know how much I don’t know, I just know that I don’t know, and I’m sure it’s a lot, you know?”. To give Virgil room for his newfound interest in his meal, I did not wait for a response, “the loss is also so much greater than any of the Abrahamic religions, as even if you do have access to them directly, you can never really, fully, comprehend their environment where and how they were planted and watered, their mythology or mystic traditions. I feel as though the bookstores selling these texts are only the fast-food versions of Buddhism and Taoism, stripped down from any cultural and historical context.”
Virgil began laughing, though my attention was stolen by the tad of white sauce sitting on his upper lip, “Seems like you have no choice then, you need to take a plane to India… I imagine it won’t be too difficult to join a monastery, but I am unsure how fun it’ll be. The only upside is that I’ll finally be able to see how you look like with your hair shaved-off.”
“Let’s keep that as a plan B, okay?”, I smirked and then continued, “but you are right, though it may give some sense of ‘tranquility’ whatever that may mean, that lifestyle does make you sacrifice anything that makes life even mildly good, or at least, bearable: family and relationships, good food and sex… not to mention any sense of forward progression… It’s even quite egotistical when you think about it, living your life for yourself, narcissistically observing your mind and breath like they are the most interesting thing in the world. I know they seem to like to talk a lot about feeling ‘compassion’ for others, but how would hours of meditating end up actually helping anyone else but yourself? There’s something about it that is not really different than a prayer, a placebo effect…
“Never underestimate the power of placebo…”
Not responding to his bait, I continued, “even if all their claims are true, and you can find true honest tranquility and make suffering gradually dissolve, it can only be achieved by forever losing any sense of pleasure or longing… that type of life is just, well, stale.”
“Staler than the food you tried to prepare last week?” Virgil smiled again.
“That is how you serve it here in Paris, cheeses and stale bread.”
“Is it really?”
“I’m not sure actually, the last time I ate in one of the restaurants here, the bread was as stiff as a rock, I assumed that’s how it’s prepared. Plus, the Boulangerie was already closed, and options were limited, excuse me for trying to make you enjoy the culture here.”
“Okay never mind that, let’s go back to your current meaning crisis. I have to say, for someone who is so desperate to be happy, you sure are picky: none of the monotheistic options, no western or eastern philosophies… What about psychoanalysis… have you ever tried it?”
“I was sent to the school counselor once if that counts.”
“Well, I doubt she was trained as a psychoanalyst…”
“Unless psychoanalysis consists of telling me to get my shit together before I am kicked out, I don’t think so…”
“Well then maybe real psychoanalysis would be a good place to start! I mean, looking back, though it’s hard to say exactly what did it, but before going to my therapist I was shit. You remember? Unfocused and constantly grumbly? A bit like how you are now? and look how I’ve turned out!” he winked, “I’m essentially fixed! I am not sure, but I suspect my therapist was a Lacanian, I think all Argentinian psychologists are. In our sessions she would let me talk the entire time, never revealing anything about herself. Then suddenly, she will pinpoint a certain word or metaphor I used, and she would expand it with her own metaphors, it almost felt like a literature class rather than therapy. But she did have some sort of… aura… if you will, which made me trust she knew what she was doing just like a shaman.” Switching to a poor imitation of an Argentinian accent he began: “the psyche works in mysterious ways… the unconscious heals after session, it process the past when you not aware, it will continue to heal you, but only once you wire 150 USD for next session”.
“Did she ever give you any advice on how to live well? Better your relationships? Live meaningfully?”
“Uhm… now that I think about it, nothing in particular, it was mostly me rambling about what happened to piss me off that week… though some of the times we would get into these really profound moments, like thanks to her I realized how much anger I still had for Maya, which I guess surprised me, given it’s already been 6 years!”
“Well, if I recall correctly, she did tell you she wanted to be alone and free, so she could… ‘discover herself’, was it? Then one week later she was posting photos of her hiking Spain with her former army officer?”
“Portugal, it wasn’t Spain, it was Portugal.”
“Right, Portugal… either way you look at– for a ‘personal self-discovery journey’ it sure seemed to include more company than you’d expec–“ I stopped, grinned awkwardly, and muttered, “too far?”
“Let’s just get back to the point,” Virgil said firmly, no longer maintaining his look of childish cheerfulness, “I’m basically saying you should give psychoanalysis a try… free associate a bit, look deeper into your dreams… It won’t hurt, will it? It may give you some much-needed insight… You will start to realize just how far you are not in control of your emotions and thoughts, you will start to see how you are motivated by reasons, past events, traumas you cannot remember or perceive, but still, they operate in the background, shape your actions, decide your life for you…”
“So far, this sounds more mystical than any religious practice or myth – hidden forces healing the soul… at least religions are not as presumptuous as psychology to use the guise of a scientific endeavor.”
“You see? Classic reaction formation, you are so blind to your own defense mechanisms it’s almost laughable. Asking for help while outright rejecting any offers… You are a walking paradox, and if God, religion or psychoanalysis can’t help you, I sure don’t know how I can…”
“I was just pointing out the flaw with this type of thinking, if anyone is getting ‘defensive’ here it’s you!”
For the first time in the entire conversation, silence dominated the table. Only now was I able to pay any attention to the bustling noise of the mechanical cafe machine and the rapid unintelligible French of the two women sitting to our left. I knew I should say something, but just as quick as I was to open my mouth I closed it, knowing that careful diplomacy is the way to go.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t think…”
“Exactly you didn’t, and you’d imagine some thinking is expected from someone who is so full of himself. Outright rejecting all of ancient and modern wisdom, western and eastern, without even trying to read the texts themselves… Summaries of great works are not great works…”
I kept quiet.
Virgil was already in full swing, “tell me, in one of your SparkNotes, did you read up any John Stewart Mil, his book on Utilitarianism? You remember the dilemma there?”
“Yes yes, I recall something vaguely, the one with the pig?”
“Yes, the one with the pig. If you don’t remember, let me remind you. There Mil argues it’s better to be a dissatisfied human than a satisfied pig because the depths of human life and experience are insurmountably more profound than that of the pig splashing in the mud. The only flaw in Mil’s analogy is that he did not take into account a case like yours, where the one rolling the mud is, in fact, a pretentious, dissatisfied pig…”
I didn’t say anything nor moved. I just stared at him deeply, my mouth opening slowly, inhaling both oxygen and his words. It was one of these rare moments that occur once every few years, where a face I can conjure up seamlessly, without having changed at all, suddenly assumes that of a stranger’s. This feeling only appears when I look at a face I have grown so familiar with that it has since become indistinguishable from the very nostalgia that is my childhood. I took my time, reoriented myself to Virgil’s new-old face. Checking myself, it was clear that he still had the same dark eyes, slightly freckled nose, same heavy eyebrows, his beard was slightly longer, his hair shorter – It was Virgil, I assured myself, still unable to shake the feeling that it was someone else looking back at me. Just as I finished reinspecting him, returning from outside my body to my head, I caught his eyes squinting ever so slightly.
“You are a fucker you know that?” a wave of annoyed relief swept my chest, I smiled.
“Takes one to know one. You are, after all, the stupidest smart person I know.” At this point, Virgil’s smile was bigger than mine. He won.
“Well, that’s rich, coming from the smartest stupid person I know…”
After that Virgil paid for the meal and cleaned himself up, “So all and all, do you think if you try, be active about it, you’ll find something worthwhile in the wisdom of the past? Something truly useful after all? Before you answer, just let me tell you, life is going to happen to you whether you want it or not, death too. There’s no better time to learn to live life well, so eventually, you will also be able to leave it well.”
“Ohh this has nice ring to it, a little on the nose though, whose quote is this?” I asked.
“Does it matter?”.
We hugged; Virgil caught his cab to the airport. I fixed my bag and took the metro to François-Mitterrand library thinking that maybe I too, should give another chance to these dead and dusty old men.