Care of Soul and Body

To care properly for the first, live each day as if it will be your last. To care properly for the second, live each day as if your supply of days is infinite. (Adapted from Evagrius Ponticus.)

The mortalist body-abuser is a puzzling figure.

Christopher Hitchens loved to drink and he loved to smoke and he knew that the synergistic effects of drinking like a fish and smoking like a chimney could lead, as it did in the case of Humphrey Bogart, to an untimely “shuffling off of the mortal coil.”  (Hamlet's soliloquy, Hamlet, Act 3, Scene 1) You would think that someone who was utterly convinced that he was nothing more than an animated body, a clever land mammal, would want to take care of  his body.

Hitchens was not suicidal. He loved to write and he had writing projects planned out. Smokers and drinkers are often gamblers: the vices come in clusters. Hitch was perhaps betting that he could enjoy both self-abuse and a long and productive life. He lost the bet, dying of cancer of the esophagus at age 62 in 2011. Call it ‘Hitchen’s Wager’ in allusion to that of Blaise Pascal.

Those of us who champion  free speech miss him and what he would have had to say about the current state of the world had he taken care of himself, or rather his body, his true self being his soul. As for the latter, one shudders at his cavalier mortalism and atheism.

People think they have plenty of time. But it's later than you think. The Reaper Man is the ultimate Repo Man. He is sharpening his scythe as we speak.