Ms Liska

When I was a FreshPerson in a new higher school, our English Literature class was delighted to meet a new to our area Ms. Liska, who was a beautiful teacher both outside and in, and so we all loved her, and knew she loved us as well, although sometimes not happy with one or another due to smart-ass behavior. One day, for reasons we could not imagine at the time, nor would I remember in this rhyme of metaphysical reasons for living and dying, Ms. Liska asked if any of us had heard of Marcus Aurelius. Whom I happened to be reading at the time. So I was, as I recall, surprised to see only my hand up because I had probably just volunteered to display my FreshPerson ignorance. She did in fact go there and ask just whom I thought Aurelius was, which seemed to me to be a Roman Emperor who was also a published Stoic philosopher. And so it seemed to Ms. Liska as well so why not dig the Stoic grinding ax some deeper? And what is Stoicism? Now definitions are not my strength, I'm more of a delineating guy. So I thought a Roman Stoic might be like a British Churchill, keeping a stiff upper lip having looked at all our deadly facts and yet blundering on anyway with this mysterious life of stoicism. Of course Ms. Liska would not allow stoicism to rear its obstinate head within its own stubborn definition so she kindly invited me to try again, not because I was wrong, she quickly added, but because I could become even more right. Marcus Aurelius reminds us if life is indeed a bed of roses then we should expect some deadly thorns along life's thunderous way. He invites us to embrace our birthday by remembering this celebration is paid back with an ultimate death day, as what grows up must also fade down and back. It's a package deal. Accepting this package as gift in its life and death polarities is a stoic thing to do, and a delusional thing not to do, a Greek act of hubris; not very Roman patriotic, not stoically realistic. Ms. Liska found this better than my stoic thorns along life's bed of dying roses way. But, then we skipped along to something else and I never did have my time to ask her what she thought about similarities and differences between who has authority to induce life and whom might, then, find responsibility for deducting my life, any life, humanely compassionate or more stoically otherwise, like a hungry Roman Emperor or voracious bear. For it seemed to me quite transparently true that in accepting my right to live and do the best I could to stoically tolerate everybody else's own acceptance of their right to live and do the stoic best we can with life's inevitable ups and downs, then we must agree with our inherited justice system, and to live within a just war view of stoic death is also an unjustified view of my authority to live responsibly. I was no more authoritative and remain no less responsible for causing my own stoic life to begin than to end my own life, much less anyone else's, or to delegate authority to some tired State to do this for me. I think Marcus Aurelius was more stoically comfortable with society's right to invite each person who has taken a life to become responsible enough to consider choosing their own death within a wider ecological context of restorative justice. But, just, fair, equitable restoration of a life irresponsibly taken does not in any way, not even a stoic way, suggest society's collective right to irresponsibly take yet another life now lived across a threshold of authority beyond which we cannot responsibly live cooperatively together. In choosing to kill, in choosing to sanction acts of deadly violence, in choosing to maim and harm, in choosing deadly and imprisoning revenge, we stoically choose our own death day with no more or less authority and responsibility than for our own birthday, and each day that follows between life's roses and deadly shaming blaming thorns, between integrity and separations devoid of restorative justice opportunity, further WinWins for each and all EarthTribe. It is difficult to teach how to stoically fall on one's own responsible sword when raised in a military-industriously violent society determined to competitively invest millions of dollars in deadening revenge rather than enlivening sacred invitations to more stoic restorative justice, celebrating life feeds life birthdays and eulogizing death breeds death days lost in mythic pasts when we first sacrificed virgin children to a drought-inducing Vengeance is Mine SunGod, even before Holy Roman Empires. Justice as revenge assumes our competitive choices are between brands of death, while restorative justice, more stoically balanced, presumes if we did not first, more primally, have cooperative choices between brands of life, then branding and marketing justified death would remain an ecological and historical moot point of LoseLose vengeful nihilism. And so I continued in my smart-ass ways, wondering what Ms. Liska would think about balancing our right to life with fight against condoning death except where stoically chosen.