So what do you do when you have used it all up?
*
On 23 May 2016 I hit thirty-five, and that night, as I blew out my candles, I realized that they covered the entire cake. I was now closer to middle age than childhood.
By any reckoning I didn’t have a bad life, but neither was I happy. The thing is, I was stuck. I seemed unable to move things forward: over the past few years, all my most exciting projects had been shot down like a sleepy row of sitting ducks. I was ready for new challenges but no one seemed particularly eager to challenge me.
I attributed my dissatisfaction in part, at least, to the political climate: the United Kingdom was at that time locked in a dismal debate about the pros and cons of remaining in or leaving the European Union. The referendum campaign was big on empty sloganizing and short on truth-based argument. A little fighting cock of a man who seemed to me to lack imagination, generosity and any trace of intelligence was clocking up far too much airtime. But at least, I told myself, it would all soon be over. Britain, in that sensible, pragmatic way for which she is famous, would make the right decision. And life would go on as before.
Summer 2016, I decided, was going to be great.
*
For an Italian in London, waking up on 24 June 2016 was not great. Whatever the ultimate wisdom of leaving or remaining, I can confidently say that the morning after the referendum sucked. I had become a stranger overnight.
The day was a blur of texts, phone calls and emails from my British friends expressing their solidarity, their horror, their love; one who had voted Leave called to make it clear it wasn’t about me, it wasn’t about racism or any form of nastiness, and she honestly believed that. My very English neighbour knocked at my door with a slice of lemon cake and a long rant against the result. Paola, my wife (also an Italian, and a psychotherapist working for the NHS), received pretty much the same treatment. I felt very loved.
And also very lonely.
I had been living in London for eight years and until that day I never realized I was an Italian. Not that I thought of myself as English, or as a European for that matter, or as a ‘citizen of nowhere’, to use a slur that a spiteful woman would slap on the likes of me a few months later. I was just a guy. I never cared about politics, I never cared about national identities, and I had been naive enough to think that when people looked at me, they didn’t see an Italian man, they saw just a person.
All at once I became obsessed with politics. I wasn’t worried about the personal consequences of the vote, I was worried about the State of Things, Things in General, Thing-y Things. I went from reading articles on the exploration of Mars and the nature of consciousness to reading articles about trade deals that might never come to pass. I tweeted and retweeted furiously, and talked and talked. I made my voice heard. Surely, through the very quantity of my words, I was making a difference, wasn’t I…? Time passed, and anti-EU sentiment became commonplace, and I felt a little lonelier. I tweeted more furiously than ever, but the more I tweeted, the darker the horizon looked. But there was still hope, I told myself. The US presidential elections were just around the corner, and they would restore sanity to the world.
I couldn’t wait.
I am a terrible political pundit.
*
A new winter came, and my mood plummeted with the temperature. I was anxious about my finances, my health, the possibility of the Third World War breaking out, and the declining quality of superhero films.
‘Do you think I’m depressed?’ I asked my wife one morning over breakfast. ‘If I were your patient, what would you say to me?’
She lifted her eyes from her yogurt to look at me. ‘Honestly?’
‘Yes, but kindly too.’
‘You’re fine. For now.’
‘You’re saying I might become depressed then.’
‘I’m saying you’re worrying too much.’
‘How could I not?’ I started to heat up. ‘Have you seen the state of the world?’
‘Yes.’
‘It’s horrendous! Modern politics is…’
She raised a hand to stop me, and said, ‘Plato.’
‘What about Plato?’
‘The Theaetetus, specifically.’
‘I’ve read Plato’s Theaetetus.’
‘Read it again.’
‘But…’
‘Please?’
At the time, I thought Paola had said it only to stop me whining. But I was being unfair.
*
The dialogue known as Theaetetus is Plato at his best, for three reasons. First, its main character is Socrates, and Socrates is always fun. Second, it asks the sort of heavy questions that only a writer like Plato could make engrossing (namely: What is knowledge? What do you mean when you say you ‘know’ something?). Third, it ends with a cliffhanger: Socrates, after helping a young man called Theaetetus to become wiser, just drops into the conversation that he has to go to court, as if it were a minor inconvenience. It was actually a major one: Socrates ended up being condemned to death for doing exactly what he has just done with Theaetetus, that is, teaching a young person to think for themselves. Or, as his prosecutors put it, corrupting their minds, which from his accusers’ point of view was entirely reasonable, considering that after talking with Socrates young people became much less willing to shut up and do as they were told.
There is a moment when Socrates shows the clever Theaetetus that he shouldn’t take anything for granted. Socrates says, let’s start with something obvious. We can agree that nothing can become bigger or smaller without changing. If you get bigger, you have changed; likewise if you get smaller. And if you don’t get bigger and don’t get smaller, well, you don’t change. A no-brainer, surely?
Not so fast. Next year, Theaetetus, being a growing boy, will be bigger, while Socrates, being already a grown-up, will not. Socrates hasn’t changed, and yet, when seen from the – now taller – Theaetetus’s point of view, Socrates will be smaller. Socrates will have changed, without changing. See? It is all a matter of perspective.
When Theaetetus admits that he is ‘amazed’, Socrates declares that he must be a philosopher, because ‘wonder is the feeling of a philosopher, and philosophy begins in wonder’.
Philosophy begins in wonder.
As Paola knew only too well, these words were very important to me. I have always sought wonder. I see myself as a wonder-oriented person. And here were none other than Plato and Socrates stating unambiguously that wonder is – quite literally – fundamental. In cherishing wonder, I was mixing with a very cool crowd indeed.
For an ancient Greek, the word ‘philosophy’ (‘love of wisdom’) had a quite different meaning from the one it has for us today. While for us ‘philosophy’ is a specific discipline, different, say, from physics or theology, for the Greeks a ‘philosopher’ was more of a general knowledge geek, and ‘philosophy’ could express itself in theories about the cosmos, in poems and in riddles, and often in a mix of all three. So, when Socrates says that philosophy begins in wonder, he is actually saying that everything that makes us human – science, art, religion, you name it – begins in wonder. From practical questions about tool-making and house-building to spiritual ones about the nature and power of the gods, it all stems from there. Socrates’ questions to Theaetetus weren’t intended to be answered, but to awaken the boy’s sense of wonder.