Robert Frost wrote the poem “A Question” in 1942 and it suggested that life was so problematic and filled with so much suffering that it prompts the question of whether life is actually worth living. The poem has only four lines:
“A voice said, Look me in the stars
And tell me truly, men of earth,
If all the soul-and-body scars
Were not too much to ask for birth.”
This seems to be a valid line of inquiry.
Socially the world seems troubled. Just last week an article in The New York Times by Eleanor Cummins and Andrew Zaleski outlined the increases in loneliness in America and described it as yet another epidemic along with COVID, mass shootings and global warming. They said psychologists are grasping at ways to resolve this loneliness epidemic.
This epidemic of anomie and aloneness was foreshadowed by Harvard’s James Putnam’s book “Bowling Alone,” which came out in 2000 and described the disappearance of communal groups across America, including Kiwanis, Knights of Columbus, Rotary, as well as church attendance. By the end of the 20th century both James Kunstler (“The Geography of Nowhere”) and Putman were highlighting our loss of community.
The COVID pandemic, which forced people to shelter in place and grow wary of human contact, furthered this trend of isolationism and now companies are having a hard time getting their employees to return to the office.
Cannibal capitalism, the emptiness of consumerism, global warming and mass shootings do seem to suggest that things are tough for us humans.
The Robert Frost poem “The Question” poses the definitive existential question. Given all the suffering we go through, is life really worth the effort? Would we be better off not being born at all? If our parents never met and never married and never procreated, we would never have existed and so we would not be the gatherer of ‘soul-and-body scars’ all of which are too numerous to mention. To live is to have one’s fair share of toothaches, ingrown toenails, broken hearts, F’s on calculus tests, being called stupid by a brother, or not getting into Harvard. And how is it possible to smile and hold your head up high if you didn’t go to Harvard?
If you were never born, you would never get wrinkles and never have to go to a proctologist. You would never have to worry about paying bills or falling out of love. You would never have to be bored with someone or have a car accident, or miss a 3-foot putt to lose the club championship. You would never be in the awful position of not being Brad Pitt or Jennifer Aniston or Bill Gates or Warren Buffet or Tiger Woods.
Other poets have expressed the same sentiment of the pain of life. The W.B. Yeats poem “The Stolen Child” has the oft quoted stanza:
“Come away, O human child!
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
For the world’s more full of weeping than you can understand.”
You may recall how Steven Spielberg used this poem in his film “AI.”
Of course the counter argument to Robert Frost’s question and Yeat’s poem is that being born into existence means nice things, too. Nice things like coffee in the morning, sleeping on clean sheets, taking cold showers on hot days, visiting Carmel-by-the-Sea and having a chocolate malted at Hildebrandt’s.
But then we get into the mathematical question of which outweighs which. Do the “soul-and-body scars” have greater density than the delight of being handed a chocolate malted by Hunter at Hildebrandt’s? Now that’s a tough question to answer but not that tough. Chocolate malteds, adorable girls like Hunter and seeing Carmel-by-the-Sea are more than enough compensation for the grim tasks of suffering, loneliness and pain that simply is a part of life.
The good doctors and medical researchers and pharmaceutical companies can develop all the little pills in the world to help a lonely or a sick or a sad patient, but the reality is we all must accept the truth that some days are good days and some days are bad days. Some days bring another “soul or body scar” and some days bring a chocolate malted by Hunter.
