It's Always Less Tragic on the Inside

This is a phrase that my friend, Matthew Carlin, said to me yesterday in reference to a common acquaintance. I thought that this phrase counted as an aphorism, because there seems to be a very important idea compacted into it. It recently occurred to me that most aphorisms occur in the context of a larger discussion, and the aphorism usually just encapsulates the discussion. This was one that did. When a person's life is clearly tragic in nature (that is, in the old Greek drama sense: one can do everything to the best of one's ability, and still the world falls apart in one's hands), it seems possible that that person might not ever be confronted with the full force of the tragedy. Though Oedipus is fully aware of his tragedy, the only reason this is so is that he has outlived what should have been his own death. Instead he merely tore his own eyes out. Hamlet, on the other hand, is never aware of his grand failure, because that failure includes his own death. In Hamlet's own mind, it sucks pretty bad, but until his death, there is reason for him to think that things might still get better. For the tragic hero, and even for the tragic character, there is often hope left that the world will balance out. But it is only we who will outlive the person or who can foresee the eminent destruction of the person long before it ever happens, so it is only we who are truly acquainted with the tragedy completed -- the life finished. Often there is nothing one can do when one sees a person whose life will end tragically unless something changes. One can attempt to make this person see the incumbent tragedy, the grand event that will inevitably happen, but it probably won't work, and the person will become indignant.

Thus, it's always less tragic on the inside.

-Priam's Pride