Freud wrote an essay for when it feels like the world is ending

0:00 I'm not the biggest fan of Freud. The man had some insightful theories, some that were problematic, but there is one piece of writing by Freud that I have really loved for years, and that is his essay titled On Transience. The essay was written in 1915, right after the start of World War I, and it gives me a lot of comfort with something that I've often struggled with, which is how to enjoy the moment when you know that it's fleeting, that its beauty will soon be replaced by disaster. So, let me tell you about this essay. The essay starts with the following: "Not long ago I went on a summer walk through a smiling countryside in the company of a taciturn friend and of a young but already famous poet." The poet admired the beauty of the scene around us but felt no joy in it. He was

0:45 disturbed by the thought that all this beauty was fated to extinction and that it would vanish when winter came like all human beauty and all the beauty and splendor that men have created or may create. All that he would otherwise have loved and admired seemed to him shorn of its worth by the transience which was its doom. words, what Freud is saying is that his poet friend was struggling to enjoy the beauty of the present moment because he knew that it was fated to eventually be destroyed. And then he explains that the transience of beauty can result in two things. One is a sense of despondency, like the poet is experiencing, kind of just like this dysphoria about like what's the point then? Or the second option is a resistance of acceptance of the fact that eventually all beautiful things will end. Or of course there is the unspoken third option, which is that we accept beauty as ephemeral, but we don't

1:31 let ourselves despair over it, rather just accept it and appreciate it in the moment. Freud argues that we cannot resist the transience of these things, but we also don't need to fall into despair like his poet friend. According to him, the transient nature of beauty only increases its value, which is kind of true if you think about it. Like a flower that only blooms for a couple days a year is a lot more precious and valuable than a flower that blooms year round. Because something is transient, that only augments its value and we should appreciate it more. Freud also argues that since it's us who gives these events emotional meaning, they need not outlive us. And I think that we can intuitively understand this, which is why none of us are really that worried about the fact that like in however many millions of years the sun

2:18 in our solar system's going to go out because we understand we're going to be so far gone, it won't matter to us. Even if we have descendants, we're going to be so far removed from them then it won't even really matter to us. But then Freud says that despite his efforts to convince his poet friend of this truth about the transience of all things, his friend was not swayed in his thinking, which I found kind of funny. It tells us a lot about how Freud kind of just expected people to automatically change their opinion on things just because he brought up a point to them. Anyway, he says his friend's resistance led him to suspect that some powerful factor was at work which was disturbing their judgment. And he then figured out what it was. According to him, what spoiled his friend's enjoyment of beauty must have been a revolt against mourning. The

3:05 idea that all this beauty was transient was giving these two sensitive minds a foretaste of mourning over its disease. And since the mind instinctively recoils from anything that is painful, they felt their enjoyment of beauty interfered with by thoughts of its transience. In psychology, we mourn when we have lost something important to us. Not just the death of a person, but any sort of loss. The loss of a job, a friendship, a loving parent that we never had. But to people like his friend, there is a sort of preemptive mourning. We mourn something that we haven't yet lost because we know one day we're going to lose it. And we struggle to enjoy the present moment because we're already living in a future where it's gone. And then he says, "My conversation with the poet took place in the summer before the war. A year later the war broke out and

3:50 robbed the world of its beauties. It destroyed not only the beauty of the country sides through which it passed and the works of art which it met with on its path, but it also shattered our pride in our achievements of our civilization, our admiration for many philosophers and artists, and our hopes of a final triumph over the differences between nations and races. It tarnished the lofty impartiality of our science. It revealed our instincts in all their nakedness and let loose the evil spirits within us which we thought had been tamed forever by centuries of continuous education by the noblest minds. It made our country small again and made the rest of the world far remote. It robbed us of very much that we had loved and showed us how ephemeral were many things that we had regarded as changeless. His description of the way things changed after World War I reminds me a lot of the brutalist style of architecture that

4:37 arose after World War II, which was just like very utilitarian, no focus on beauty at all, just like we experienced something terrible and now we're just trying to survive, we're not focusing on beauty anymore. It's as if the world had decided to forget about beauty because it was just harshly reminded how quickly it could be robbed of them. But then he says, "Mourning as we know, however painful it may be, comes to a spontaneous end. When it has renounced everything that has been lost, then it has consumed itself and our libido is once more free to replace the lost objects by fresh ones equally or still more precious. It is to be hoped that the same will be true of the losses caused by this war. When once the mourning is over, it will be found that our high opinion of the riches of civilization has lost nothing from our discovery of their fragility. We shall

5:22 build up again all that the war has destroyed and perhaps on firmer ground and more lastingly than before." Well, I disagree with him that mourning has an end point. Not all mourning has an end point, you know, like losing someone that's important to you, that's always going to be a part of you. But I do think he's right that there will eventually come a day when you find meaning in new things and you rebuild from your sense of mourning. His last two sentences make me think of the cyclical nature of society and really of all things. You experience loss and then you rebuild from it. It's the way nature works and it's the way nearly everything works. This essay has a lot of implications for modern concerns. Climate change, fear of World War III, more local issues, fear of aging. I am one of those people who, like his poet

6:07 friend, spends a great deal of time mourning things that haven't even happened yet. In my case, it's because I struggle to live in the present. I spend so long living in the future, either worrying for the future, catastrophizing, or looking forward to it, being really hopeful for it. To me, the future is so seductive because it holds the potential for anything. But of course, one disadvantage of living with your head in the future is that you cannot fully enjoy the present moment because you're so aware of its transience. You're so aware that it's going to be taken away from you. But I think this essay is a good reminder to not fear the things that we will lose because it only makes them more precious in the present. So try to live in the moment and try to enjoy today's beauty because tomorrow when it collapses, you will rebuild. Do not be so afraid of

6:53 mourning that you start doing it now. If tomorrow calamity strikes and you're going to be mourning the loss of the life you had, so be it. Don't put yourself in misery today for something that might not happen tomorrow. That's kind of my takeaway from this essay. But let me know what you thought about it. And also, don't forget that Splintered Parts is publishing in literally like 10 days. So if you haven't put in your pre-order yet, it would really do me such a solid if you could do that. Link is down below if you want to learn more about my upcoming novel. Thank you so much. >> Tell me what you want. What you need. Tell me. Tell me. Tell me. Tell [music] me what you want. What you Tell me what you want. What you need. Tell me. Tell me. Tell me. Tell me what you want. What you need. Tell me what you want. What you need. Tell me. Tell me. Tell me. Tell me what you want. What you Tell me [music] what you want. What you need. Tell me. Tell me. Tell me what you