One big frustration we can experience in life is having unrealistic expectations of other people. That is, we can want people to behave in ways that are just not within their desires or capabilities. What is the best way to deal with this? We use the example of the humanist Petrarch’s strained relationship with his son.
Among the many problems that we are faced with today is the lack of restraint, the lack of moderation, that is actively supported and encouraged by our culture. If you have something, you are told that you deserve more. If you want something, you are told that you deserve to have it. If something stands in the way of your getting something you think you deserve, you are told how to obtain that thing you desire. Few people pause to think that what they crave may carry a heavy burden in the long run.
You may ask yourself why we study the lives and experiences of great exemplars. When I say “exemplar” I mean a person of substance and distinction, a person of notoriety in some field of endeavor. There are many reasons for this; I will attempt to give a few of them here.
It is an unhappy fate for a philosopher to be known to posterity only through his enemies. Quotes may be taken out of context, writings may be warped or obfuscated, and conclusions may be cherry-picked to present a picture far out of accord from the writer’s original intention. We do not know if this is precisely the fate of the Chinese philosopher Yang Zhu (440-360 B.C.), but one suspects that if more of his writings had come down to us, we might have a more favorable view of his doctrines. But we have what we have, and this does not exactly inspire man’s noblest sentiments. Or does it? Each reader will have to judge for himself. It would be wrong to ignore him, even if we disagree with his doctrines.
I read recently that a very rare animal was observed in the wild in the state of Iowa for the first time in over one hundred fifty years. It is called a fisher; I had never heard of it before, but the biologists tell us that it is a predatory mammal related distantly to the mink and the otter. The story reminded me of a similar one I had heard about some years ago, when a bird believed to have been long extinct was spotted in Arkansas.
There is a passage in Cicero’s treatise Tusculan Disputations I was thinking about today while driving home from work. The passage begins as a parable, then closes with a glorious invocation to action. Cicero makes an analogy from nature observed near the River Hypanis, then draws some conclusions from that analogy. He says:
The Renaissance literary figure Petrarch met his fame and success with ambivalence. On the one hand it was the fulfillment of what he had worked for, but on the other, it left him with deep feelings of unease. These feelings eventually ripened into outright contempt for those who could not understand the origin of his malaise.
The great humanist Francesco Petrarca (Petrarch) had opportunity to reflect on the fact that the more he gained in knowledge and experience, the less and less certain he became of his own judgments. These thoughts were recorded in an essay called On His Own Ignorance And That Of Many Others (De sui ipsius et multorum ignorantia). Some of these observations are incredibly frank.
Acquaintance with the ancient art of invective reminds us just how hypersensitive today’s reading audience can be. We often hear tiresome complaints from some quarters about how some article or other on the internet “triggered” someone, or how some author is a “horrible person” for upsetting someone’s serenity. It was not always so. Invective and personal attack have a long and distinguished history.
Quintus Curtius 
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