I am writing out a sense of sadness, as well as gratitude and I hope an appropriate perspective.
This post concerns life and death. We’ve attended a funeral in each of the last three weeks—all older men, who had lived a good life. Today, however, I learned of the death of a much younger colleague, whose sudden death is a shock to all who knew him.
I find myself drawn to a series of quotations and affirmations, which I thought to offer together as the last in my little series of ‘gleanings’. First, three short sayings with a common thread. The American writer Henry Thoreau (1817 – 1862) famously said, Most men lead lives of quiet desperation.
I am not sure if this was meant specifically to refer to males, but I suspect so. Though it was in his time true that many men lived with greater choices than women, and perhaps in Thoreau’s own circles many had wealth and privilege, even so he was convinced that in fact they were not content, indeed deeply frustrated, to the point of ‘quiet desperation’. I quote this because it seems to me in many ways still true, though I would want to remove the limitation to men only.
In much the same vein, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807 – 1882) wrote,
Every man has his secret sorrows which the world knows not; and often times we call a man cold when he is only sad.
Again, I do not think this is only about men, but true of so many of us all. We carry within us regrets, losses, and griefs. And what we do with that is often simply to be quiet, or hold it close, with the result that others may think us cold or unaware, when in fact we are acutely aware, but may not know just how to deal with all we are carrying within along with all else that is demanding of us without. In short, often it is just all too much, and we easily simply just keep going, doing the business.
And that thought leads me to this wonderful saying of the brilliant comedian Robin Williams (1951 – 2014):
Everyone you meet is fighting a battle you know nothing about. Be kind. Always.
Such insight and wisdom. And with it, the need to add this: Be kind to yourself, as well.
For his part, Thoreau developed a method of reflection and growth, which provided the basis for his writing. He ‘went to the woods’, by which he meant he established a cottage, where he went to think and to write. But more than a place, this was a quite profound way of engaging with the challenges of life and its ‘quiet desperation’. At one point he wrote about his purpose, not only in going to this place, but ultimately in his life and work:
I went to the woods because I wanted to live deliberately;
And I wanted to live deeply and suck out all the marrow of life,
To put to rout all that was not life,
And not when I had come to die discover that I had not lived.
Living deliberately meant to engage with all that life has to offer, in the deep anguish that is sometimes our reality, the hopes and ambitions, the striving and achievements, the disappointments and fears. It means to live, ‘sucking the marrow of life’. That phrase could sound selfish or individualist, but I do not think that was Thoreau’s meaning at all. Rather, I think it meant to engage with the deepest of relationships, of love and loss, fruitfulness and decline. For that is what it means to live and it is this courage and ‘deliberateness’ that I find encouraging in his ideas and example. Paradoxically, ‘going to the woods’ is about engaging, not simply letting life happen to us but rather taking it on, ‘having a go’, and living ‘deliberately’, come what may.
Yes, I write with sadness, but also with gratitude for the life we are given, the years I have enjoyed, and the friendships and community which give shape and perspective to it all.
Thank you Frank