溫故知新 Old wisdom, today’s insight — ONGO
What Does It Mean to Choose a Servant's Life Over Kingship Among the Dead?
If even the greatest hero longs for a single living day more than honor after death, is this fierce love of life a fear of death, or a treasuring of life?
I would rather serve as a landless man's hired hand on earth than rule as king over all the perished dead.
This question split whether honor after death or living life is precious. Homer's Achilles, though he chose an early death for honor, longs in the underworld for a single living day above all — honestly revealing the fierce weight life holds in itself. This love of life bore two branching answers in later Greek thought. Epicurus said this life is all, so enjoy it fully without fear, while Plato set the life of the soul freed from the body higher, seeking to surpass Achilles's longing. In the East too, a treasuring of life and a detachment that sees life and death as one flowed side by side. Is being alive more precious than honor, or an attachment to be surpassed — Homer sang earliest "the fierce preciousness of being alive."
For us who easily let an ordinary living day slip by unheeding, Achilles's confession — a servant of the living over a king of the dead — makes us mark again how precious is the sunlight of a finite life.
Come to the underworld, Odysseus meets the shade of Achilles, the greatest of warriors.
📝I, Too, Stand Before It
Come to the underworld, Odysseus meets the shade of Achilles, the greatest of warriors. When he consoles him that he reigns like a king among the dead, Achilles gives an unexpected answer — he would rather be a poor man's hired hand alive than king over the dead. Even the hero who chose an early death for honor longs, from the far side, for a single day's sunlight of the living. I sense this fierce confession is the honesty of the ancients, who did not beautify death. Life is precious in itself. Yet this love is not a denial of death but also an awe toward a life that shines the brighter for being finite. I stand before this question too, recalling how precious is the daylight of this day I let slip by unheeding.
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