Being born must be the most surprising thing that ever happens to you. Not only can a foetus have no idea it can be born, but as soon as it is, it is subject to a range of experiences it has never had and has no reason to think it ever could. It gets colder. It gets brighter. You get held, prodded and poked. Who knew that was a thing? The early minutes of life must utterly collapse a baby’s mental model of the world. It’s a miracle any of us survive.
And the surprises keep on coming. The womb is a stable environment. The outside world is full of objects which come and go. Including people (babies, at least the ones I have known, do not seem to regard their fellow humans as things like themselves). From your very first minutes, you are seeing some people for the last time.
Most of the time, we don’t care. You may never see the person sitting across from you on the Tube again, but they are just an extra to your movie star; background to be shuffled away when you move to the next scene.
With others, people we know, not just see, it is different. Seeing them for the last time means we are losing something, a relationship, perhaps a version of ourselves. This is something we feel and something we think we should feel. Part of the reason Meursault in Camus’ L’Etranger is condemned is that he doesn’t appear to feel any grief at his mother’s death. Guilt can replace the sense of loss we don’t feel.
There is something faintly romantic about this, but also faintly unreasonable. It is unrealistic to expect all our relationships to maintain the intensity they once had. Contact ebbs and flows and, like flowers, relationships which aren’t regularly watered tend to droop. People change. Edginess can be seductive to a teenager, but a turn-off to an accountant.
Guilt has its uses but in this case, not only is it often unfair, but it can actively harm, standing between us and truth.
The ancient Stoics had an exercise they called the praemeditatio malorum (“the anticipation of evil”). Whenever scared of some future prospect, they would force themselves to confront it in their minds, run through what might happen, how they would feel and how they would react. Over time, they found, the events lost their sting. Thinking about misfortune made them better at dealing with misfortune.
Consider a similar exercise about loss. Imagine you have seen someone for the last time. Imagine going somewhere for the last time, or doing something for the last time. How do you feel? Does the prospect upset you? Or are you willing to be heartless enough to admit it doesn’t? Not as much as you think it might. And think it should.
Applying the test, people and things seem to sort themselves into different categories. There are potential losses which are genuinely upsetting – I would rather assume my mum is immortal. There are some people I would prefer not to have seen for the last time – that friend from college I haven’t seen for years – but if I have, well, c’est la vie. A flicker, perhaps, but brief and we move on.
And there are those which prompt an emotional reaction as flat as a dead man’s cardiogram – I have no interest in returning to the land of my birth. I left when I was 2, so have no real connection or understanding. It’s just a foreign country which doesn’t really do it for me. Been there, done that. Had the deep-fried Mars bar.
There are also, of course, people and places whose permanent disappearance would be a blessed relief. As you know. And wouldn’t expect me to elaborate on.
Between the first two categories lies not just value – having the same feelings for a parent as for a long-lost friend might raise uncomfortable questions about family dynamics – but also plausibility. We might like to see an old friend or visit a particular place but realise that circumstances make this unlikely. Perhaps they live far away, somewhere you will probably never have reason to visit. Adaptation leads to acceptance – it would be nice, but it is unlikely ever to happen. So we don’t get too invested. Just as we may want a new car, but we don’t want an aircraft carrier to call our own, however nice that prospect may be.
Done rigorously and honestly, the Test would tell us a lot. It would show us what we really value and what we don’t. It would show us the gaps, people or places for whom we feel less than we think we should. There might be some uncomfortable questions – what would it say if I can’t rouse much interest in a relative? About them, sure, but also about me. I would be forced to confront myself as I am, rather than as I might prefer to think I am.
But there would also be an opportunity. Knowing what we actually value, we could orientate our lives towards it. Spend more time with those we really don’t want to lose or doing things we really love. Reach out to those with whom we have a past and would prefer to have a future. We might reconsider (within the bounds of social niceties, of course) those with whom our links are inertia and nothing more. We could start to lead lives more reflective of who we are because we would have a better understanding of who we are. A seemingly cold exercise could add warmth to our lives.
We could even take things a step further. We are, generally, the person we value most highly in the world. What would your answer be if you turned the Test back on yourself? And what would that tell you?
Stewart Slater works in Finance. He is now also on Substack, where you are welcome to follow him.
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