The Aim of Life

                      

An artist's life involves great swathes of attention. Attention is our way of connecting and surviving. Paying attention to the minute details in our lives makes our lives extraordinarily large. Henry Miller championed this attention and his artistic and literary career stand as a legacy to his vast vision and scrutiny.

'The moment one gives close attention to anything, even a blade of grass, it becomes a mysterious, awesome, indescribably magnificent world in itself.'  

'The aim of life is to live, and to live means to be aware, joyously, drunkenly, serenely, divinely aware.' 

'Develop interest in life as you see it; people, things, literature, music- the world is so rich, simply throbbing with rich treasures, beautiful souls, and interesting people. Forget yourself.'  

Henry Miller was born in 1891 and died in 1980. 

Shortly after his eightieth birthday he authored a beautiful essay about ageing and the key to living a full life.

Forty years on and I find his views spiritually relevant and his attitude to life uplifting, intelligent and endearing.

I wish I had known him.

'On Turning Eighty'
Henry Miller

"I have very few friends or acquaintances my own age or near it. Though I am usually ill at ease in the company of elderly people I have the greatest respect and admiration for two old men who remain eternally young and creative. I mean (the Catalan cellist and conductor) Pablo Casals and Pablo Picasso, both over ninety now. Such youthful nonagenarians put the young to shame. Those who are truly decrepit, living corpses are the middle-aged, middleclass men and women who are stuck in their comfortable grooves and imagine the status quo will last forever or else are so frightened it won't that they have retreated into their mental bomb shelters to wait it out.'

On careers, he has this to say...

"If you have had a successful career, as presumably I have had, the late years may not be the happiest time of your life. (Unless you've learned to swallow your own shit). Success, from the worldly standpoint, is like the plague for a writer who still has something to say. Now, when he should be enjoying a little leisure, he finds himself more occupied than ever. Now he is the victim of his fans and well-wishers, all of those who desire to exploit his name. Now it is a different kind of struggle that one must wage. The problem now is how to keep free, how to do only what one wants to do."

And reflects on how success affects people...

"'One thing seems more evident to me now- people's basic character does not change over the years.... Far from improving them, success usually accentuates their faults or shortcomings. The brilliant guys at school often turn out to be not so brilliant once they are out in the world. If you disliked or despised certain lads in your class you will dislike them even more when they become financiers, statesmen or five-star generals. Life forces us to learn a few lessons, but not necessarily to grow.'

Children...

"You observe your children or your children's children, making the same absurd mistakes, heart-rending mistakes often, which you made at their age. And there is nothing you can say or do to prevent it. It's by observing the young, indeed, that you eventually understand the sort of idiot you yourself were once upon a time- and perhaps still are."

Reasons to be cheerful...

"At eighty I am a far more cheerful person than I was at twenty or thirty. I most definitely would not want to be a teenager again. Youth may be glorious, but it is also painful to endure...

I was cursed or blessed with a prolonged adolescence. I arrived at some seeming maturity when I was past thirty. It was only in my forties that I really began to feel young. By then I was ready for it. (Picasso once said: 'One starts to get young at the age of sixty and then it's too late.') By this time, I had lost many illusions, but fortunately not my enthusiasm, nor the joy of living, nor my unquenchable curiosity."

And here lies his spiritual core, his life-force...

"Perhaps it is curiosity- about anything and everything- that made me the writer I am. It has never left me...

With this attribute goes another which I prize above everything else, and that is the sense of wonder. No matter how restricted my world may become I cannot imagine it leaving me void of wonder. In a sense I suppose it might be called my religion. I do not ask how it came about, this creation in which we swim, but only to enjoy and appreciate it."

Growing old gracefully...

"Perhaps the most comforting thing about growing old gracefully is the increasing ability not to take things too seriously. One of the big differences between a genuine sage and a preacher is gaiety. When the sage laughs it is a belly laugh, when the preacher laughs, which is all too seldom, it is on the wrong side of his face."

Changing one's mind...

"With advancing age my ideals, which I usually deny possessing, have definitely altered. My ideal is to be free of ideals, free of principles, free of isms and ideologies. I want to take to the ocean of life like a fish takes to the sea...

I no longer try to convert people to my view of things, not to heal them. Neither do I feel superior because they appear to be lacking in intelligence."

Self-righteousness...

"One can fight evil but against stupidity one is helpless... I have accepted the fact, hard as it may be, that human beings are inclined to behave in ways that would make animals blush. The ironic, the tragic thing is that we often behave in ignoble fashion from what we consider the highest motives. The animal makes no excuse for killing his prey; the human animal, on the other hand, can invoke God's blessing when massacring his fellow men. He forgets that God is not on his side but at his side."

Ever the optimist...

"My motto has always been, 'Always merry and bright.' That is why I never tire of quoting Rabelais: " For all your ills I give you laughter," As I look back on my life, which has been full of tragic moments, I see it more as a comedy than a tragedy. One of those comedies in which while laughing your guts out you feel your inner heart breaking. What better comedy could there be? The man who takes himself too seriously is doomed...

There is nothing wrong with life itself. It is the ocean in which we swim and we either adapt or sink to the bottom. But it is in our power as human beings not to pollute the waters of life, not to destroy the spirit which animates us.

The trickiest thing for a creative individual is to refrain from the effort to make the world to his liking and to accept his fellow man for what he is, whether good, bad, or indifferent.

I was writing this as a storm raged above, as I finished typing a beautiful rainbow emerged.

How fitting.

With thanks to Maria Popova.