A Third Way

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30: Clarity. [...]

Third nine moves. The setting sun shines as it goes down. The old either sing and beat their drums or else bewail their lot. Either way is ill-omened.

(The best attitude to cultivate at this time in your life is a general acceptance of fate. To totally lose yourself in the happiness of the moment is as bad as to bemoan the passing of time. Such folly of the mind and the emotions leads to a loss of inner freedom.)

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Socrates, when condemned to death and thrown into prison, asked some one who was playing a song of the Greek poet Stesichorus with great skill, to teach him also to do that, while it was still in his power; and when the musician asked him of what use this skill could be to him, as he was to die the next day, he answered, "that I may know something more before I die."

(Ammianus Marcellinus, Roman History XXVIII iv §15. Stobaeus, Florilegium III xxix, tells a nearly identical story concerning a very elderly Solon, but there are no English translations of Stobaeus and, alas, my Greek isn't up to it yet.)

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I received the above I Ching reading (30–3) today. I couldn't imagine what it referred to until I found myself telling somebody the above little story. It is why I study philosophy so assiduously: life has been very difficult and I haven't managed to figure out how it might be enjoyed, but I have managed to develop the skill of study, and I hope that my use of it makes a satisfactory offering to Divinity.