Call It What It Is

Aurelius vs Tolkien on definitions

Updating your perspective on the world can, for some, be like seeing for the first time. Many of us have seen videos of colorblind people getting access to new tech that helps them see the full spectrum. When they tap in for the first time, it’s overwhelming and emotional. Something true shines through a veil that they’ve been burdened with forever.

I remember when I started to reconnect with my faith several years ago, and things were becoming clearer to me about who I am and why I am here. I would get distracted while driving by trees and landscapes. Particularly Japanese Maples and other crimson trees mixed into mostly green gardens. Something was more striking about everything.

Refined Jedi Sight

Consider this poem out of the Star Wars universe about the role of the Jedi Order in bringing balance to the galaxy.

"First comes the day

Then comes the night.

After the darkness

Shines through the light.

The difference, they say,

Is only made right

By the resolving of gray

Through refined Jedi sight."

― Journal of the Whills, 7:477

It’s a beautiful stanza. Light is reality. Darkness is equally valid and inevitably enters the world, complicating whatever light came before it. What confounds so many of us is when the canvas then turns gray. Complex experiences and feelings stop us in our tracks.

Am I loved?

What is the right thing to do here?

Somebody gets hurt, no matter what I choose.

We overthink. We ache.

You need a worldview, something that reconciles or can be used to interpret what you’re experiencing.

Glasses. Philosophy. Story. Philosophy is in many ways a kind of story.

The danger is, of course, that not all glasses reveal tru th equally. The Jedi, this poem suggests, have refined sight or an ability to interpret what’s happening.

You might call that wisdom.

How We Label Things

J.R.R. Tolkien wrote in his celebrated essay, On Fairy Stories, about the role of a good story in illuminating the world for its audience. He called it “recovery” in the sense that our vision and health have been compromised. A good story heals.

Separating himself almost directly from the Stoics, Tolkien quipped, “I do not say ‘seeing things as they are’ and involve myself with the philosophers,” which is what Marcus Aurelius or Epictetus would call for.

“I might venture to say,” Tolkien continues, “seeing things as we are (or were) meant to see them.”

The Stoics had a dogmatic commitment to blunt reality and practiced it by doing things like calling wine “the mere juice of crushed grapes,” so as not to romanticize what it’s called for commercial purposes.

Steak is a piece of dead cow, scorched and salted. That’s the “truth”. Dead Scorched Cow is a little less appealing for 12oz at $45 than calling it Premium Aged Ribeye Steak.

“We need, in any case, to clean our windows; so that the things seen clearly may be freed from the drab blur of triteness or familiarity—from possessiveness,” Tolkien adds.

Whether it’s eyeglasses, windows, or stained glass, the idea that unites so many great thinkers is that something exists outside of the room we’re living in. There is something we’re missing, and either smudges, a faulty prescription, or the absence of light is preventing us from seeing what we’re supposed to see on the other side.

Truth. Beauty.

Purpose. Design.

Overexposure and familiarity dull the senses to what would otherwise take our breath away.

The Stoic mindset, though it has a lot to offer, has some pitfalls, including this one. Aurelius refers to sex as just “friction between bodies — followed by a convulsion”. Okay…..

He’s trying to deter himself from lust by demystifying sex and pointing out some of its peculiar and unattractive realities. That may have some utility, but it’s cold, and sex, like Tolkien might suggest, is meant to be something far more powerful, warm, and beautiful than this. The triteness and overfamiliarity Tolkien describes is also a good way to think about pornography and what it does to the viewer over time.

Clean your windows from the “drab blur”.

Have you ever seen Mount Rainier just beyond Seattle, Washington? It’s a wonder. The mountain stands so tall and grand that on a clear day, it’s like an alien spaceship landing on the horizon. The first few times you lay eyes on it, particularly if you’re not from that mountainous region, you’ll do a double-take.

How is that real?

Let's return to the issue of the steak.

What if the answer is neither the Stoic insight, that it’s merely a charred strip of animal flesh, nor is it this thing we excitedly call steak?

What if it's just sustenance, nourishment, and a gift deserving of gratitude?

That is the perspective most of us are missing every single day. It’s not “Thank you Lord, for this ham, eggs, and sourdough,” it’s actually, “Thank you Lord, for this bounty.”

Call the food whatever you want to call it, but what matters most at the end of the day is the value you attach to it. It’s a pretty good value to consider your meal a blessing and to be grateful for it. Has gratitude ever steered a person wrong?

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