A book that has changed my life...

This post is not meant to persuade you to buy and read this book.
It is merely to illustrate some of the ideas that have been slowly changing my outlook on life, in the hopes of giving someone something to think about. Before I tell you about Gravity and Grace, I should give you a little background story, which will hopefully be interesting enough to hold your attention.

Last term, I applied for an honors class called "Faith, Science, and Religion" in order to fulfill one of my Common-Core religion requirements. The course was taught by a Jesuit priest, Father Carter, who turned 90 years old this year. Incredibly, he still rides his bike to campus everyday. Anywho, because of my temporary status as an honors student, I was invited to "Dinner with the Jesuits!," which (being a broke college student eager for free-food opportunities) I agreed to attend.

Although I was hoping to sit with Father Carter and shmooze my grade up a bit, I ended up being seated with a different priest- Father Rogers, who specializes in French history and literature. Over the course of the meal (which was in our campus dining hall- also slightly disappointing, seeing as I eat there most days anyway), I told Father Rogers about my interest in philosophy and he recommended "Gravity and Grace" by French philosopher Simone Weil.

Usually, when a teacher recommends a book, I just smile and enthusiastically lie about my intentions to "totally check that out asap!" However, for some reason, when dinner ended, I decided to go to the library and check out the book.

This began my philosophical journey with Simone Weil. For the next five months, I read a little bit of Gravity and Grace every morning while eating my breakfast. If you're thinking "Wait a second... no way you could check out a book for five months!," then you're right, because, while I did consider just keeping the library's copy and paying the fine, I eventually bought my own copy on amazon.

So, what's this damn book about?

"Gravity and Grace" is a fragmented collection of Weil's thoughts on subjects of existence, including good, evil, suffering, grace, beauty, attachment and the supernatural. Rather than piece together something naturally interminable, I'll share a few of my favorite quotes, which, despite being written before 1950, are still relevant to human life today.

"It is impossible to forgive whoever does us harm if this harm lowers us. We have to think that it does not lower us but that it shows our true level."

"If someone does me harm, I must want this harm not to degrade me- this out of love for him who inflicted it upon me and so that he shall not really have done harm."

"To lower oneself is to rise in the domain of moral gravity. Moral gravity makes us fall to the heights."

Simone Weil was an avid supporter of political action, and believed suffering (preferably for the sake of the greater good) was a condition for spiritual purity. While this may sound demanding, Weil contends that renouncing material and imaginary attachment results in suffering which brings us closer to reality.

"We must leave on one side the beliefs which fill up voids and sweeten what is bitter."

"[People] owe us what we imagine they will give us. We must forgive them this debt."

"I am also other than what I imagine myself to be. To know this is forgiveness."

Weil takes this maxim of detachment further by suggesting the spiritual equivalent to snapping a rubber band on your wrist:

"Never to think of a thing or being that we love, but have not actually before our eyes, without reflecting that perhaps this thing has been destroyed, or this person is dead."

This exercise is a painful one, but it helps those who are thoroughly attached (such as me) to accept the reality that such pain is not actually hypothetical, but inevitable. This theme of suffering as a requisite to reality and real love is one that Weil touches on several times. She calls for the renunciation of anything which "fills the void," including expectations of the future and past.

"To love truth means to endure the void and, as a result, to accept death. Truth is on the side of death."

"If we consider what we are at a definite moment- the present moment, cut off from the past and future- we are innocent. To isolate a moment in this way implies pardon. But such isolation is detachment."

Again, such assertions can seem trite, pointless or even counter-productive. However, the mere consideration of our attachments, ie. why we value what we value, is a necessary step if we are ever to justify our actions.

The last area of Simone Weil's work that I would like to talk about is beauty. To me, beauty has always seemed an outlier to reason and evolution. Why is a sunset beautiful? Wouldn't a creature with no such appreciation spend more time eating and reproducing, and therefore triumph evolutionarily? Why do we value beautiful things, and why, if not for the grace of god, do they exist? Again, in unembellished prose, Simone Weil can help us understand:

"Beauty is the harmony of chance and the good."

"The beautiful is that which we desire without wishing to consume it. We desire that it should be."

"The beautiful is that which we can contemplate. A statue, a picture which we can gaze at for hours."

I would go further and say that such descriptions of beauty explain the many passions which compel us, whether it be music, computer code, or philosophy. Our lives are determined by chance (what family you were born into, whether you took biology or art class one year), and this chance, when combined with good, creates passion in the same way that a shooting star is beautiful. Certainly, my own chance encounter with this book has increased my fascination for it, despite the fact that I might have gotten a slightly better grade in the course had I been seated next to Father Carter instead of Father Rogers.

I hope I have succeeded in providing some food for thought for my fellow Steemit philosophers to chew on- for more, please follow my page and/or check out out Gravity and Grace.