I was in a philosophy class at the time. As always, I’d started out bored. I’d settled most of my opinions so why was I bothering with this? But then, I was overcome by a kind of terror. I’d been clutching at the desk and my chest felt full. The lecture hall had no windows. Why? This fact seemed particularly annoying. It was as though the hall was designed for rocks rather than people, but what use was there in complaining? No amount of worry would spawn windows, just like no amount anxiety would change Marissa or Charlie. No amount of fear could alter the facts and no amount of pain would make me certain of where I actually stood.
I hated these feelings, not least of all because I didn’t associate them with myself. I believed in the power of the brain and in its ability to quell irrational impulses. Pain and suffering were the results of belief, not the world itself and that meant I didn’t have to feel the way I did. Fear is future facing so I brought myself back to the present by focussing on the lecturer. She was in her late forties, probably, with dark, almost purple looking hair. She seemed to pulse and quiver while she spoke, as though everyone found her words as interesting as she did. Her voice was borderline sad, almost like a plea to take seriously the issue she was discussing. This was a philosophy of religion class and she was discussing the so-called ‘logical’ arguments for God’s existence.
Logic and God don’t belong in the same breath.
“William Paley gave the analogy of a watch,” she was saying. “If you were to stumble across a watch, you’d assume it had a designer owing to its intricate, well-balanced design. Theologians argue the same can be said for our world.”
We eat and breathe out the same hole. We become itchier the more we scratch. There is nothing perfect about our design.
“The universe must have a first cause,” the lecturer went on, her lip quivering. “Everything has a cause and the cause is greater than the effect.”
I’ll accept your ‘first cause,’ but how does this ‘first cause’ answer prayers? Why does it have to be surrounded by angels? And how can it have a son that needs to be sacrificed to absolve us of our sins?
The lecturer asked if anyone knew any more ‘logical’ arguments for the existence of God. One student, who often asked questions and put forward arguments of his own, responded, throwing in words like ontology and phrases in Latin. The lecturer listened with curiosity, despite knowing the argument, while he explained that God, by definition, is the greatest being conceivable and that to exist in reality is greater than existing in theory. Therefore, he must exist because he wouldn’t be the greatest being possible. This argument is beneath comment, and I will settle it by saying, simply, that mathematicians have proven before that two plus two is five and yet, no one with a sound mind will believe it.
What is belief? Why do all these arguments ring so false? Logic is something I respect but to use it for God is to debase it. All those arguments are retroactive. Their heart yearned for God already. The argument is just a dressing. Has anyone dropped to their knees on logic alone? Belief is deeper than logic and so should be tamed by it. It deludes us, comforts us, but we weren’t built for comfort. I am responsible for my suffering. Suffering comes from our false perceptions. We create the world in our image. The only God in this world is the human brain.
The class ended. The lecturer said something, but I didn’t hear. I was rushing and everyone else seemed deliberately slow. Outside the air was ghostly and sharp. The street was busy. Students laughed or spoke about ordinary things. I was jealous of them, thinking them all unplagued by the kind of anxiety I felt. Their faces seemed abnormal, overly expressive, flaunting their luck over me. As though drunk, I was giddy and everything seemed to run away from me. I reached the river. My heart curdled and I couldn’t sift through my thoughts. The river gushed rhythmically, like a heartbeat and I was reminded of my philosophy, that to live with nature was better than against it. The world had created a challenge for me. That was all it was. It wasn’t even certain yet if there was any real threat. And if so, what was to be done? Why worry about something I couldn’t control?
I went over it all again.
I’d met Marissa in my first year. She had this rough, scraggy, but intentional look to her hair. Her eyes were large and probing, able to scan over every inch of you. Everything about her, from her raspy voice to the way she scrunched up her cheeks seemed so well chosen, so apt for life that I was enamoured by her almost straight away. She had this romantic indifference to the world. It seemed impossible to sway her from whatever she wanted. I used to see her walking around the college but never expected the two of us to talk. I knew her name and that she studied history but little else.
One day, she was in my lecture on Socratic philosophers. She’d turned up late, unapologetically, and the only space was next to me. She seemed interested but unenthusiastic. She was leant forward, pulled towards the lecturer but her face expressed that same, open indifference she had towards everything. The whole time I was aware of her, but she didn’t even glimpse in my direction.
“I didn’t know you took this class,” I said afterwards.
“I thought it might be useful for my Ancient Civilisations essay.” I didn’t see it but I’m sure she shrugged.
“Are you interested in philosophy?” The question sounded so dead and clumsy in my voice.
“No, I find it all a bit pointless really.”
There was a pause.
“Sorry,” she said, although her tone told me that really, I ought to be sorry for wasting my time on something so frivolous. “That was rude of me.”
“Philosophy when it’s done properly is supposed to teach you how to live.”
“Philosophy is circumstantial.”
Funnily enough my first impulse was to agree with her. We were walking out the hall at this point. It was sunny and cold.
“I think most ideas come out of circumstances,” she was telling me. “Socrates wouldn’t have thought that way if he wasn’t in Athens.”
“But we can take his ideas on their own strengths.”
She shrugged. “By strengths you mean whether or not it works for you, in that moment. It’s a classic problem. Stealing is wrong and an old man in an armchair can write a whole book on why it’s wrong, but if he was starving, he’d have a very clear and obvious reason to steal and he’d be able to tell you why it’s actually right to steal.”
I laughed. “I do believe there are solid, rational principles which are universal and that we can figure out for ourselves. Some ideas are indifferent to circumstances. Stoic ideas are just as powerful today as they were when they were written. They still work.”
“Epictetus was a slave wasn’t he?” she asked. “Don’t you think it’s a good idea for a slave to convince themselves that they should accept everything?”
“That’s not what he said.”
“You don’t believe in God do you?”
The question took me aback. Only then did I realise we’d made it to the park.
“Of course not,” I said.
“Religious ideas evolve out of circumstance. I’m sure you’d agree with this. People need a God to explain the world. People are suffering so need to feel like they’re chosen. Today, we don’t need God so no wonder it’s fading. Stoicism is just like any religion.”
Our conversation never stopped and in my memory, we had broached every worthwhile topic there was. She always spoke without passion, but with such cool, heaviness that everything had a real force to it. The sun was setting, the sky was orange and although I recognised the streets, the park, the trees, I didn’t know where I was and felt an odd tremor in my chest. Marissa had always been such an immovable object in my mind that to have spent this long talking to her was surreal. And yet, it all felt somehow inevitable, familiar and impossible all at once. It was never supposed to happen but I also couldn’t imagine anything else.
We got back to the town square.
“Lets get some wine,” she said.
“I don’t drink.”
“Why not?”
“It’s against my philosophy.”
“Well we’re doing it anyway and your philosophy also says to accept what you cannot control.”
We drank while we had what seemed like one prolonged sparring match. Everything began to sink and swim. Everything seemed possible and in some odd way that I cannot explain, in the cold midnight air, I had my arm around her waist and had kissed her, almost not realising it had happened.
That was the start of everything. We were intimate, we spent all our time together but she still had that coldness. The first real show of tenderness was when I said her name when we were lying in bed together that first night.
“You used my name,” she said, softly.
“Of course.”
“No, it’s just… nice.”
Ecstatic, hopeful – all future centred emotions I didn’t allow myself to feel, bubbled up inside me as we walked down the river a day later. It was foggy, cold, icy and even that seemed her doing. She walked with such resolution while I spoke, responding positively even optimistically, but with a tempered emotion. While we got our coffee, our food, she did so with excitement which was merely verbal. Her movements were still slow, deliberate and inexpressive.
We continued to see each other. All our conversations were solemn, serious and if she smiled, it was because she was sizing me up. And yet, late in the evening, she would hold my hand and occasionally stop to kiss me firmly on the lips. I felt this spike through my stomach whenever I thought of her. She seemed capable of anything, and I wanted to submit to her. I found myself, for the first time, in a fit of passion. I thought irrationally beautiful things and loved them. I wanted to be expressive although I had no one to be expressive to. It was only when I realised I had worked myself into a distraction that I tried to return to my Stoic ideals, embracing and appreciating this new feeling but remembering who and what I was: a rational human being with the ability to decide.
“What are we?” she asked one night. We were holding each other, under the sheets, unclothed.
I started spouting off something stupid, taking her question to mean something abstract, something about the human condition.
“No,” she said, laughing but somehow at herself. “What are we, the two of us?” Her fingers were around my arm and her lips brushed against my bare skin when she spoke. I could say it. I knew what the word was but didn’t understand what it should mean. Wouldn’t it be a lie? But we were made to feel that way, weren’t we? Why not say it? I babbled something before saying three words, three words that had been hammered out of me, that were made for other people and not myself. My heart was in my mouth. My bones ached. The ceiling was coming down towards me.
“I love you too,” she said, calmly, and sank her head into my chest.
We never spoke about being in love afterwards. Instead we acted out a pattern of two people who must be in love because they spent so much time together. Sometimes we’d spend an afternoon barely talking, but walking arm in arm and kissing one another. There was a kind of solemn duty to our relationship – as though this is what a proper, ordered union of two people ought to be. I’d hear her sigh sometimes but was frightened to ask why. I might tell her a story and after listening, quietly, she’d murmur “Okay,” and nothing else. She might ask, in a practical tone, what time our reservation was or the name of the book I had recommended. She spoke in the tone of an official asking my name and address.
Despite all this I didn’t doubt myself or her. There was a sort of equilibrium between us. We read together and were able to say nothing at all but still feel the other’s presence. Why bother with everything else? What was the use of passionate declarations and hair tearing, like all our art tells us there needs to be for it to be ‘true’ love? There was a peace to our lives which continued uninterrupted for some time. I don’t like to think about what disturbed it. I don’t want to give it life. But who cares? What am I afraid of?
We were at a typical uni house party one night. Marissa had slowly gravitated to her friends, I to mine. My circle always wanting to abstract things. No one can mention a story without someone else trying to extract a moral from it or taking it in general terms. One friend, Jude, once an atheist like myself and the others, had begun attending Quaker meetings and a group called ‘Questions’ which discussed “the big things,” all from a dogmatically Christian perspective.
“What is this, Jude?” I asked him. “Have you started feeling the Holy Spirit?”
He shook his head. He looked somehow ashamed, as if paying a penance.
“You’re too cynical,” he said.
“I’m cynical of the fact that a percentage of the population seem to be in touch with this emotion that others can’t feel, this feeling of the Holy Spirit.”
“Firstly, theologians don’t class it as an emotion.”
“But it’s something you feel no?
“I’ve felt a… stirring,” he said, nervously. “And I feel I owe it to myself to explore this feeling by reading the texts.”
“It’s all about feelings, is it? Just think about it…”
“I am. That’s why I’m reading the Gospels…”
“You ought to read Aurelius instead. That’ll work better than your psalms. Why not get help from the real world rather than a fiction?”
I looked over at Marissa who was now talking to Charlie, a guy in our year I saw around but never spoke to. I didn’t know much about him except that he was a chemistry student and that I thought his head looked like a baby potato. I noticed something about Marissa when they spoke. No longer did her eyes have the questioning look. Instead they were open, receptive and playing about her lips was the beginning of a smile which didn’t stem from power but from pleasure. I looked back at Jude.
“You’re a pacifist now too I suppose?”
“I don’t know.”
“It’s not a bad thing,” I said. “I’m not big on violence myself.”
And then I heard a sweet, merry sound, like a morning bird, flutter its way between the two of us. The sound was nostalgic, reminding me, strangely, of some school afternoon when I was only fourteen. I knew this sound and I was aware of its beauty and yet it hit me as shrill and cruel. I turned round to see Marissa laughing, her face curled up beautifully into some mirthful sculpture. How long had it been since she’d laughed like that? And he was laughing too and his laugh, with his eyes disappearing and his tongue pressed between his perfect teeth, looked evil, cruel, sadistic and aware of myself and my feelings.
“Pacifism is interesting though,” Jude went on. “I take more from Gandhi and Tolstoy in that respect…”
I didn’t hear much more. My leg was shaking. I nodded along but looked at the floor. Marissa and Charlie were like some white light you see but are told not to look at directly. It was like there was some great, howling din in my ears that everyone else was ignoring. How could Jude go on talking like that? Didn’t everyone else think there was something wrong? I tried to catch Marissa’s glance but she didn’t look back and I was convinced this was on purpose.
“Jumping to conclusions… this is ridiculous, it’s an innocent conversation…”
But then there was her laugh…
Jude was still speaking when Marissa and Charlie joined us. She sat next to me although I was scared to touch her, like it might scorch my skin.
“She’ll pull away and be repulsed,” I thought.
Marissa didn’t say much, and Charlie got involved with Jude. His voice was overly calm.
“You mention Gandhi and Tolstoy, but they were both religious,” I said, quickly. “I don’t understand this shift towards religion Jude. You read the Bible and talk about the great messages from it but look how much work you have to do to get there. Why rely on a book which shrouds its moral teachings in stories about a man wrestling with an angel or water turning to wine? Why not read someone sober, like Epictetus, who can lay out clearly what their philosophy is.”
“He’s said it perfectly,” Charlie said, jerking a finger in my direction. “People who say the Bible has great lessons are basically saying they agree with it already. Look, why do they bother with all these symbols which can be misinterpreted? Noah’s Ark, supposedly, is about being mentally robust in the face of unknown catastrophes. Why don’t they just say that? If they thought that they would have said it. No. They use the symbols because they’re not really symbols at all. They actually believe those stories. I can sympathise with the fundamentalists Jude because at least they’re actually taking it at face value.”
Here was my own idea, so well-formed in front of me and yet I wanted to counter it. What did I know about him? Why was I letting myself get so worked up?
Marissa and I walked home, arm in arm as usual, silent, hearing only the distant voices of drunk students. I wanted to kiss her on the forehead but couldn’t. I wanted to ask what she thought of Charlie but the words were clogged like mucus in my throat. I eventually spat it out and all she did was smile, shrug her shoulders and say:
“He’s a nice boy.”
And that night, when we got home, she kissed me passionately, firmly, clutching onto me. Halfway through I stopped, seeing Charlie’s face in my mind, and felt sick somehow.
“Are you okay?” she asked.
“I’m fine,” I told her and we didn’t continue. She cuddled up to me in that familiar way, much like she had done on that first intimate night.
Every party we went to I was looking for Charlie and would be surprised when he was there and shamefully relieved when he wasn’t. Marissa would always talk to him and I couldn’t help feeling they were discussing things she would never discuss with me. When he was there, she’d leave me very quickly and I wouldn’t see her for most of the night. I’d be distracted the whole time, finding every innocent conversation uninteresting and pointless. With a metallic heart I’d ask someone if they’d seen Marissa and would get the same response every time.
“Oh, I think I saw her with Charlie.”
Since everything was shrouded in uncertainty, every response of mine was irrational and hateful to me. I was scared of leaving her alone with Charlie, terrified of what they might do, and then would hate myself for treating her that way. Whenever we left I’d shake Charlie’s hand and he’d have some sly smile on his face which he lauded over me like a predator. And I’d be embarrassed, feeling weak, convinced he could feel the clamminess in my hands and hear the sharpness in my breath.
And that morning, the morning of my philosophy lecture, Marissa had asked me, with disinterest:
“When does your lecture finish?”
“Two.”
“Are you coming home straight after?”
“No. I’ll go to the library.”
But I was on my way home. I simultaneously wanted to be far away from Marissa and close to her. I was scared of and desperate for certainty.
“What would a Seneca do in my situation?” I thought. They would also have nothing external to attach their fears to. There was no loving hand, no God that knew about the hairs on my head.
I stopped at the river. The water was a dead, mouldy green. The grey sky hurt my eyes.
“Live in accordance with nature…” I said to myself. Was this nature? This dead river? The dull grass? Even if the sun was shining and the river sparkled, would I have my peace of mind? Would Charlie mean any less to me? Would Marissa care any less about him?
My house was white with crumbling paint and ashy windows. Only now did I see how dilapidated and sorrowful it was. I fumbled outside the door, grabbing then pulling my hand away from the door. A mother with a pram passed me and I almost thought she gave me a strange look.
“Why doesn’t he just go inside?” she might have thought. It was a good question. I couldn’t control what was behind that door. I didn’t know what was behind it either. But at least outside I understood everything. I knew the street, the grey sky, the dull grass – I could understand all that. But I couldn’t run away forever.
Something chilled me as soon as I entered the hall. The brown wood, the white walls, the uneven staircase, all had a ghostly quality to them. It was quiet and deliberately empty. Slowly, I went to the upstairs landing and froze. I heard something – a faint sound, like a rustle. Even that sound was evil. There was something sinister in how faint it was, how distant it was, how indifferent it was to my presence.
What was it? I asked despite knowing exactly. I crept closer and recognised the noise, still blurred, soft and supple, then a murmur, barely perceptible, a hushed whisper… My heart leapt into my mouth. My muscles seized up and there was a painful rush which ran down my chest right through my waist. There was that distinct sound – the gentle smacking of lips.
“Maybe it’s something else?” I told myself, not believing it. “Maybe it’s a creak in the walls?”
I thought I was going to be sick. My throat was dry and I couldn’t swallow.
“This doesn’t happen to me does it?” I thought. “Didn’t I do everything I was supposed to? Aren’t I a rational, intelligent person? I love her. So why would she…” My vision darkened. The vacuity of the house closed in on me. I threw all sorts of explanations at the world, trying to convince myself that I’d made a mistake, but nothing worked against the blunt reality of it all. Desperate to escape, I ran downstairs to the bathroom, almost hoping they’d hear me. I locked the door, slumped on to the cold unforgiving floor and threw my head in my hands.
“Why is this happening? I don’t understand. Why can something like this happen?”
These questions were pointless. Who was going to answering them? And yet these words were pulled out of me like an exorcized demon. Every time I asked myself why, some satanic voice would reply: “There’s no reason why. It just happens.”
Did it have to?
“You cannot control it so why worry about it?”
What was I going to do now?
“Be tough.”
I was weak.
“Control yourself.”
I wanted to be sick.
“Just forget about her.”
I loved her.
“It doesn’t mean anything.”
It had to mean something.
None of my philosophy could do anything. Everything that I used to hold over the world, everything that I had put so much faith in now seemed pointless and pathetic.
“None of them understand,” I said bitterly, picturing all those long beards and ancient faces I’d once venerated. I was so desperate to remove my pain, my skin felt like it was cracking. “Endure the suffering…” the devilish voice said again, but the truth is, the Stoic was never in love like I was, otherwise they would have seen it… how futile it all was. What then was there to do? I couldn’t accept that it didn’t matter or that it all meant nothing. I needed a way out; a way I might be helped. And that is what I did. I knew nothing would happen and yet some compulsion forced me to it. So, there I was, on the floor, a passionate disbeliever with tears in his eyes praying to a God I knew didn’t exist. Who remembers what I said, I just remember crying and crying.
Needless to say, I left Marissa. She didn’t love me. Fine. What of it? Life happens, my classes still bore me and whenever this incident comes to mind, and I remember what I did, to be honest, I find it all rather embarrassing.