Delphic Maxim 11: Think as a mortal

I’ve set myself the challenge of responding to each Delphic Maxim for 15 minutes a day.

11. Think as a mortal

Every morning I wake up at 5, haul myself out of bed and down the road to the gym. I try to give my life routine and structure. I exercise regularly, try to get to bed early, drink plenty of water, eat reasonably healthy, imbibe too much alcohol on the weekends. I get emotional, I get tired, I feel envy, joy, anger and am confused by unfamiliar things from time to time. Mortal. Human.

I’m sure this maxim would have also been a reminder to the Greeks that their station in the world is not the same as that of the Gods. If there’s one lesson that recurs in the epics of the class world, it’s that hubris brings people undone like nothing else. It brings gods undone, but it is particularly deadly for people. Take for instance, Marsyas’ competition with Apollo. Believing he was the best lyre player in the world, he challenged the god to a competition, which he subsequently lost. Apollo flayed him. Which is a totally sensible and proportional reaction (at least for a Greek god). The lesson is that hubris is a trap — mortals need to remember their place in the cosmos.

Thinking as a mortal has a component of decay to it. A consciousness that our time here is limited, so it is best not to waste it. But that doesn’t mean running around trying to constantly fill the time with activity. Leisure might involve very little activity, but it is necessary for our ‘souls’, whatever you consider that to be. Actually, Aristotle’s De Anima is translated variously as ‘On the Soul’ or ‘On the Mind’ — it’s one of the first philosophical investigations of the nature of consciousness, of what it means to be a living, thinking, feeling creature with agency and control over the world around them.

The degree to which we have agency over the world is also a component of the mortal condition. We’re shaped by our worlds, but we also shape it. We are conscious of our world, but we are given language and meaning through our relationships with others. We socially construct the world in which we live, but we are biologically bound to certain characteristics, the most common among all of them that one day we will die.

I don’t know that I consider this necessarily gloomy. I don’t like the idea of ceasing to exist — I would rather live forever, I think. But knowing that our time is limited has a way of focusing the mind, maybe only for a minute, or when the year ticks over on another birthday, or when you lose someone close to you. It reminds us to enjoy our lives while we have them, whatever it is we may do — and to prolong the quality of those lives I think is also quite important. And thus the exercise, the water, the sleep, the early rise.

So this maxim is a call to health. You are mortal, don’t forget it. Take care of yourself, and enjoy the time you have. Life is precious and we cling to it because it is a beautiful game to play.

Did borrow that phrase from a Lacoste ad.