A Solution to Our Greatest Fear
The ‘View from Above’ in an Astronomer’s Existential Poem
The ‘View from Above’ in an Astronomer’s Existential Poem
Rebecca Elson, who passed away at the age of 39 from non-Hodgkin lymphoma, released a book of poems in 1986 entitled A Responsibility to Awe. Held within these poems is a specific one entitled Antidotes to Fear of Death which observes our our place in the universe.
Inspired by her time as an astronomer working in the male-dominated environment, Rebecca sought to distance herself from the constructs of her job and turn the lens instead to the stars above.
Antidotes to Fear of Death is a staggering work with the pinning's of philosophical undertones not so dissimilar to the works of the ancient Stoics — particularly with their view of Nature and their exercise of A View from Above.
The Poem — “Antidotes to Fear of Death”
Sometimes as an antidote
To fear of death,
I eat the stars.
Those nights, lying on my back,
I suck them from the quenching dark
Til they are all, all inside me,
Pepper hot and sharp.
Sometimes, instead, I stir myself
Into a universe still young,
Still warm as blood:
No outer space, just space,
The light of all the not yet stars
Drifting like a bright mist,
And all of us, and everything
Already there
But unconstrained by form.
And sometimes it’s enough
To lie down here on earth
Beside our long ancestral bones:
To walk across the cobble fields
Of our discarded skulls,
Each like a treasure, like a chrysalis,
Thinking: whatever left these husks
Flew off on bright wings.
Stoic Belief of Nature
The philosophical school of Stoicism founded by Zeno of Citium around 300 BC used to believe that the chief good in life was eudaimonia, which meant fulfillment or happiness.
John Sellars, author and lecturer in Philosophy at Royal Holloway, University of London, succinctly describes this in his book Lessons in Stoicism as “A good, happy life is in harmony with Nature… this involves both the thought that we should live harmoniously with the external world (Nature with a capital ’N’) and in harmony with our own human nature.”
Part of living a virtuous life means pursuing our best selves in each situation we encounter. It is about maximizing our potential and living in harmony with our nature and abilities. Marcus Aurelius, the Roman Emperor (161–180 AD) argues that we should “live as nature requires,” in other words, as our own nature as humans demand.
Marcus reminds himself in Meditations:
“Universal Nature’s impulse was to create an orderly world. It follows, then, that everything now happening must follow a logical sequence; if it were not so, the prime purpose towards which the impulses of the World-Reason are directed would be an irrational one. Remembrance of this will help you to face many things more calmly.”
A View from Above
Held within Stoic philosophy is an exercise not dissimilar to Elson’s poem, providing the practitioner with a way to distance themselves from a situation by looking at it in a grander scale.
Often times, we allow a stressful situation to expand in our minds and carry this feeling out to its fullest extent, believing that whatever is happening to us will continue to happen long into the future. This thinking takes us out of the present moment and brings about a feeling of helplessness and despair. For example, one who has lost their job and desperately searches to find a new one, may begin to catastrophize the event the longer they go without finding a job, believing that they will never again be able to find one. This thought process is based in fear rather than logic and can really hinder the individual’s advancement in life.
The Stoic exercise of “A View from Above” helps the individual combat the despair in the present moment by, as Donald Robertson (author of How to Think Like a Roman Emperor) describes it, “viewing things objectively, isolating the present moment and dividing it into smaller parts.”
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, which has its roots in Stoicism, uses this “depreciation by analysis” to this day as a way to help patients focus on the here and now.
One is meant to compare and contrast their present moment with that of viewing the present moment from high above, picturing the event from high above, like Hercules looking down.
By performing the view from above, we are able to better to get a hold of the moment and our fear as “one strategy divides events into smaller parts, and the other imagines the whole of existence and an event’s miniscule place within it.” By comparing and contrasting these two ideas, we are able to look at events with a more distanced lens and help to de-catastrophize the event at hand.
Regardless of how hard life becomes, how chaotic the world around us seems to be, remembering our place by just looking to the stars is all we need to remind ourselves of our place amongst Nature.
Using the View from Above
As human beings with conscious awareness of our own mortality, every day, whether we realize it or not, death is a thought that lingers in our minds. Protection of the self is built into our daily lives in routine ways, whether it be knowing what we’re eating, looking both ways before crossing the street, or wearing a seatbelt while driving. Because we have an understanding that we will die one day, this fear of death drives our actions and thought process.
Early on in the poem, Elson utilizes the strategy to the view from above to combat this fear, writing:
Sometimes as an antidote
To fear of death,
I eat the stars.
Those nights, lying on my back,
I suck them from the quenching dark
Til they are all, all inside me,
Pepper hot and sharp.
By picturing herself amongst the stars, she distances herself from the fear of death by notating that our lives are not dissimilar to the lives of everything around us. There is an end date for all, even the massive stars above which have burned bright for billions of years.
We are, in essence, a part of nature, and follow the same fundamental logic as everything else in nature.
And sometimes it’s enough
To lie down here on earth
Beside our long ancestral bones:
To walk across the cobble fields
Of our discarded skulls,
Each like a treasure, like a chrysalis,
Thinking: whatever left these husks
Flew off on bright wings.
The next time you are in a situation that seems unbearable, or that it won’t end, think of the view from above. Think of the shortness of life, how we will once again return to nature. Look down upon the situation from above and realize how small the problem we feel in that moment is.
We do not know whether or not Elson wrote this poem before or after she was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin lymphoma, but the wisdom contained within the poem shows an individual searching for ways to understand her situation and see it in the larger picture of her place in the world.
At some point or another, we will all find ourselves doing the same thing.
As Marcus Aurelius wrote:
“Constantly reflect on how swiftly all that exists and is coming to be is swept past us and disappears from sight. For substance is like a river in perpetual flow, and its activities are ever changing, and its causes infinite in their variations, and hardly anything at all stands still; and ever at our side is the immeasurable span of the past and the yawning gulf of the future, into which all things vanish away. Then how is he not a fool who in the midst of all this is puffed up with pride, or tormented, or bewails his lot as though his troubles will endure for any great while?”
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