Take Hozier To Church

"Take me to church; I'll worship like a dog at the shrine of your life. I'll tell you my sins and you can sharpen your knife. Offer me that deathless death, and good God, let me give you my life."

Not a very Stoic song, but it's beautiful. He really believes what he is saying. He completely prostrates himself at the feet of his lover. She is his salvation, and the only heaven he looks forward to. He puts all his eggs into this one basket.

As Stoics we would advise him against this sort of obsession. We would advise him to take delight in his lover and yet to contemplate a life spent without her. People fall out of love, or disappoint, or die. She's just a person. She isn't the answer to all his problems.

So what is? According to the Stoic Week Handbook, it is virtue, and virtue is:

Wisdom
Moderation
Courage
Justice

Still, there's something very romantic about a risky plan.

I suppose it's the fatalism that appeals. Stoics are taught not to value life too much, so to risk it all on a shaky proposition gets it partly right. Some things ought to be worth chucking it all for, but the deification of a single human being probably isn't one of them.

On the other hand, I am reminded of Christopher Hitchens* who often described his bohemian lifestyle, the lifestyle which likely killed him, with a poem by Edna St. Vincent Millay:

My candle burns at both ends
It will not last the night;
But ah, my foes, and oh, my friends -
It gives a lovely light.

There is a beauty to that. It isn't our way, but it does give a lovely light.

* * *

*He may be referencing Hitchens when he sings that we were "born sick." Hitchens often said that the Christian God has created a world in which "We are born sick and commanded to be well."