life is not a task to be completed.

dear little voice, 

do you really believe you are an unspectacular thing? have you not come this far? have you not loved so much? have you not paused one night, on a street you have walked so many times, have you not seen it then for the first time, glowing? did the world not come into focus? did you not open your eyes wide enough to see it all? was it not beautiful? were you not not standing there, but everywhere? could you hear the sound of your own tears? did you not understand that this was only for you? why did you forget? when did you begin to believe you had to earn it? 

little voice, I have a friend who told me in amazement, with crying eyes, that March is nearly over: 

• What do you mean, March is nearly over? 

• March is nearly over, and I have nothing to show for it. 

• Which March? March is not nearly over- March is coming fast. March is 11 months away. You have time. You still have March. In fact, you don’t even have it yet. It’s waiting for you.

• 

  (Illustration by Maurice Sendak from Open House for Butterflies by Ruth Krauss)

there is a wonderful line in a Franz Wright poem that punctuates a scene of making love, suddenly: 

“Summer dawn flowing into the room parting the
curtains—the lamps dimming—breeze
rendered visible. Lightning,
and then soft applause
from the leaves . . .

Almost children, we lay asleep in love listening to the
rain.

We didn’t ask to be born.”

You did not ask to be born. 

little voice, you have been taught to ‘earn a living,’ as though life is something to be achieved. a task to be completed. a prize to be earned by only those of us rattled by the most frenzied need to work, plan, and do. is your ambition nervously biting her nails? time is running out. go on. go on. March is nearly over. 

it is wonderful to not have chosen to be born- you are not paying back some grand debt, little voice. you do not need to, as Mary Oliver says, “you do not have to walk on your knees for a hundred miles through the desert repenting”. you are free. you did not choose this. you did not bargain for it.

a free life requires free time. time is money. but if time is money, by definition, it cannot be free. 

little voice, perhaps you do not need to own the business. or write the book. or earn the promotion. perhaps you do not need to sell your life for money or fame. perhaps you do not need to see one thousand friends in one thousand hours. perhaps you do not need to eat off of every restaurant plate, see each pyramid, know each poem by heart. what is this breathless haste with which you are at work? life is not an earned thing. it is freely given. you owe nothing to something that is yours. 

when you have exhausted life of achievement, money, politics, intimacy, love, play- what remains? you remain, little voice. 

but a question remains with you, tucked in your pocket, little voice. go on: take it out. it feels like lambs’ ears, smells like peppermint, and under your tongue it feels like a firefly.

what do you do when you did not choose? when that makes everything, now, your only choice?

little voice, I do not know many things, but I do know that some time ago I almost died on a rock by the ocean. it is a very messy and long story. the details are mostly irrelevant. but I will tell you that, when I was better enough some time later to pick up my pen, I wrote a list- coloured by the brevity of life- of everything I thought important to do before I did die, one day, to succeed at this strange and sore thing we call Life. this is that list of important means to success:

little voice, i mention this because it is important. i was not thinking about legacy when I was bleeding on a rock. i was thinking about Love. 

little voice, the answer to your question is this: you take delight.

i will give you something now. Herman Hesse, in his 1905 essay "On Little Joys," meditates on our preoccupation with busy-ness and our lazy abandonment of presentness in the following passage:

"our eyes, above all those misused, overstrained eyes of modern man, can be, if only we are willing, an inexhaustible source of pleasure. when I walk to work in the morning I see many workers who have just crawled sleepily out of bed, hurrying in both directions, shivering along the streets. most of them walk fast and keep their eyes on the pavement, or at most on the clothes and faces of the passers-by. heads up, dear friends! 

just try it once — a tree, or at least a considerable section of sky, is to be seen anywhere. it does not even have to be blue sky; in some way or another the light of the sun always makes itself felt. accustom yourself every morning to look for a moment at the sky and suddenly you will be aware of the air around you, the scent of morning freshness that is bestowed on you between sleep and labor. you will find every day that the gable of every house has its own particular look, its own special lighting. pay it some heed if you will have for the rest of the day a remnant of satisfaction and a touch of coexistence with nature. gradually and without effort the eye trains itself to transmit many small delights, to contemplate nature and the city streets, to appreciate the inexhaustible fun of daily life. from there on to the fully trained artistic eye is the smaller half of the journey; the principal thing is the beginning, the opening of the eyes.

a stretch of sky, a garden wall overhung by green branches, a strong horse, a handsome dog, a group of children, a beautiful face — why should we be willing to be robbed of all this? whoever has acquired the knack can in the space of a block see precious things without losing a minute’s time… all things have their vivid aspects, even the uninteresting or ugly; one must only want to see.

and with seeing come cheerfulness and love and poesy. the man who for the first time picks a small flower so that he can have it near him while he works has taken a step toward joy in life.

[there are] many other small joys, perhaps the especially delightful one of smelling a flower or a piece of fruit, of listening to one’s own or others’ voices, of hearkening to the prattle of children. and a tune being hummed or whistled in the distance, and a thousand other tiny things from which one can weave a bright necklace of little pleasures for one’s life

my advice to the person suffering from lack of time and from apathy is this: seek out each day as many as possible of the small joys.

Mary Oliver, Wild Geese.

little voice: life with a thousand hands is coming to touch you. who told you this was not enough?  did you not understand that this was only for you? why did you forget? when did you begin to believe you had to earn it? 

you will feel better with a flower in your hand than you will with a certificate. perhaps this does not make you listless or stupid. perhaps you just paused a while to notice what the Earth is offering. 

love,

ars poetica