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A review by nusighba
How We Weep and Laugh at the Same Thing by Michel de Montaigne
4.0
I've never felt indifferent and connected to a book at the same time like this. It's strange how mediocre yet impactful reading this felt.
To speak of the mediocre parts, let's include the only factor playing in it— the fact that Montaigne kept repeatedly narrating some story every now and then just to convey a belief/idea. And this went on throughout the whole book, taking away half its spirit. Sure, the stories added a wider perspective to whatever he was speaking of, but they were so unnecessary. I couldn't have paid any less attention to them.
And as for the impactful parts, they really come off the most mediocre topics, ironically. As someone who enjoys a good contemplation on life and death and every phase in between, this book fulfilled my appetite for it; although not to absolute fullness, except one (getting there!).
To summarize Montaigne's pontifications— firstly, we have many aspects and facades to our emotions, and we are never defined by just one of them. Montaigne went in depth with the layers of contradictory emotions exisiting at the same time, like how we can be both pleased and devastated on the news of someone's death, and that does not imply we're completely evil or completely empathetic. He emphasized on how humans contain multitudes and complexity and the cliché "neither black nor white but grey"-ness, and that's just how their emotions are too.
He also examined conscience, and pretentiousness, and why he believed pleasure to be inherently synonymous to virtue— all in the most basic way, but still made the writing seem dynamic and never monotonous.
The last chapter, "To philosophize is to learn how to die", is one I've still been thinking about every so often since I read it a week ago.
To make peace with death, to find peace in death and to accept the fact that we're dying at this very moment— is all this chapter is about.
Let me get a bit personal about my feelings towards death pre-reading this. I had always been extremely scared of death. Especially, for the past couple years, I had almost gotten hypochondriac which seemed to stem out of this fear, and I would stress myself out to the point it literally made me sick. I have always been so afraid of my life and whatever good it has, coming to a halt.
As a Muslim, I have learned one thing regarding death through Islam, that is to always stay prepared for it, and that I am just a traveller in this world, hence my surroundings and its belongings are all temporary. But I have never been approached understandably with the topic of death. And Montaigne did just that.
I imagine Montaigne coming to terms with his own fear of death while he penned this chapter. It resonated with me on an intimate level, and I felt a reassuring hand placed on my shoulder as the chapter told me, "Your fear is normal because you are living in it. You are dying as you read this, and maybe you should finally make peace with it."
He even managed to calm my hypochondriac attitude down, saying that the reason why we are scared of an illness which hasn't yet occurred to us is because its vision is still so far away and thus blown out of proportion; than when we're actually dwelling in the illness, is when we're never really scared of it anymore.
I absolutely adored this chapter for these personal reasons and this solely played the part in making this whole book along with the author an impactful one for me. I can certainly feel a change in the way I approach death now, because I'm already dying, because I'm already in death.
To speak of the mediocre parts, let's include the only factor playing in it— the fact that Montaigne kept repeatedly narrating some story every now and then just to convey a belief/idea. And this went on throughout the whole book, taking away half its spirit. Sure, the stories added a wider perspective to whatever he was speaking of, but they were so unnecessary. I couldn't have paid any less attention to them.
And as for the impactful parts, they really come off the most mediocre topics, ironically. As someone who enjoys a good contemplation on life and death and every phase in between, this book fulfilled my appetite for it; although not to absolute fullness, except one (getting there!).
To summarize Montaigne's pontifications— firstly, we have many aspects and facades to our emotions, and we are never defined by just one of them. Montaigne went in depth with the layers of contradictory emotions exisiting at the same time, like how we can be both pleased and devastated on the news of someone's death, and that does not imply we're completely evil or completely empathetic. He emphasized on how humans contain multitudes and complexity and the cliché "neither black nor white but grey"-ness, and that's just how their emotions are too.
He also examined conscience, and pretentiousness, and why he believed pleasure to be inherently synonymous to virtue— all in the most basic way, but still made the writing seem dynamic and never monotonous.
The last chapter, "To philosophize is to learn how to die", is one I've still been thinking about every so often since I read it a week ago.
To make peace with death, to find peace in death and to accept the fact that we're dying at this very moment— is all this chapter is about.
Let me get a bit personal about my feelings towards death pre-reading this. I had always been extremely scared of death. Especially, for the past couple years, I had almost gotten hypochondriac which seemed to stem out of this fear, and I would stress myself out to the point it literally made me sick. I have always been so afraid of my life and whatever good it has, coming to a halt.
As a Muslim, I have learned one thing regarding death through Islam, that is to always stay prepared for it, and that I am just a traveller in this world, hence my surroundings and its belongings are all temporary. But I have never been approached understandably with the topic of death. And Montaigne did just that.
I imagine Montaigne coming to terms with his own fear of death while he penned this chapter. It resonated with me on an intimate level, and I felt a reassuring hand placed on my shoulder as the chapter told me, "Your fear is normal because you are living in it. You are dying as you read this, and maybe you should finally make peace with it."
He even managed to calm my hypochondriac attitude down, saying that the reason why we are scared of an illness which hasn't yet occurred to us is because its vision is still so far away and thus blown out of proportion; than when we're actually dwelling in the illness, is when we're never really scared of it anymore.
I absolutely adored this chapter for these personal reasons and this solely played the part in making this whole book along with the author an impactful one for me. I can certainly feel a change in the way I approach death now, because I'm already dying, because I'm already in death.