URL: https://helendecruz.substack.com/p/cant-take-it-with-you
I came across this post as people shared of the author's passing, and this as their last post. Their website reads and cites the many stories shared of her passing and impact.
The post itself is powerful.
I am in hospice care and reflecting a lot on what a good life is. Writing is hard, this will take me days rather than just one morning or afternoon. But I want to share these thoughts. You can’t take it with you, yet we often feel ourselves immortal and act as if we can.
I remember seeing Van Gogh’s Starry Night in Moma three years ago and being profoundly moved. I had seen so many reproductions, of course, but the original moved me in a way no reproduction could have prepared me for. Yet Van Gogh was in an asylum, deeply unhappy, depressed and working in bouts of frenzied productivity. He saw the sky through the window of the room he was confined in. We certainly wouldn’t say Van Gogh had a flourishing, eudaimonic life. But he contributes to our flourishing. At least, he did to mine, on my first trip after the height of pandemic when I saw his painting live in 2022.
Audre Lorde and Spinoza helped me to see that being a good person means flourishing in many domains. Lorde saw herself as a poet foremost, as Caleb Ward explains in his monograph on Lorde (in progress). But she was also a Black woman, a mother, an activist, and a lesbian (“a woman who loves other women” as she called it). She insisted on being recognised in all her dimensions.
Pursuing empty goods of prestige, honor you become anxious because, for instance, prestige is dependent on what others think of you. It is exhausting, hence Spinoza decided that he didn’t care of what others thought of him. And we still value his work for that.
Instead, you benefit yourself by expressing yourself as a full being, as a rose bush that flowers fully. People also delight in you. We delight in say, Lin Manuel Miranda’s work to bring us beautiful music. But even if you do not “produce” something, eg as a birder who just likes to watch birds, it is still something people value in you. That is because Spinozist full expression of yourself is virtuous.
This is more than just appreciating well roundedness in others. We see these quirks and passions as absolutely central to someone. It is something we can treasure long after they are gone.
Note: lots of thoughts recur in this older piece but my thinking has evolved to see our passions for certain things and cultivating skills like dancing and poetry as virtuous.