No one suspects the days to be gods. —Ralph Waldo Emerson
Recently I wrapped up another workshop at the Muse Writers Center, this one on the art of the essay. As the last session came to a close, I shared a passage from one of my favorite books, Rainer Maria Rilke's Letters to a Young Poet. In the first letter, Rilke asks his protégé whether he is serious about writing and, if so, what he is prepared to do about it.
"Go into yourself," Rilke writes. "Search for the reason that bids you to write; find out whether it is spreading out its roots in the deepest places of your heart; acknowledge to yourself whether you would have to die if it were denied you to write. This above all—ask yourself in the stillest hour of your night: must I write? Delve into yourself for a deep answer. And if this should be affirmative, if you may meet this earnest question with a strong and simple, 'I must,' then build your life according to this necessity; your life even into its most indifferent and slightest hour must be a sign of this urge and a testimony to it."
I've read that passage hundreds of times over the years and have shared it with dozens of people. But on this particular occasion, it moved me with unexpected intensity. Having just left Port Folio Weekly after a 10-year-stint as editor-in-chief, I find myself confronting a realization that is at once terrifying and exhilarating: in this next chapter of my life, I can do anything I please. I have before me a fresh canvas and a palette of colors, and I must decide what sort of life-vision I want to paint for myself. The fear arises when I temporarily lose faith in myself—in my ability to settle on a vision and to live by it. But at the moment, the apprehension is vastly overshadowed by excitement. I can begin anew, like Thoreau, when he moved to Walden—or, for that matter, when he "left the woods for as good a reason" as he had for going there in the first place.
The question is, what is at the heart of this vision?
Most of us, when we lose a job, or leave it because of irreconcilable differences with management, immediately begin looking for another, on the assumption that earning income is our most pressing concern in life. Perhaps it is. I have no desire to be destitute. I played in enough empty refrigerator boxes as a kid to know that they make great make-believe fortresses but rather poor shelters in a storm. And seeing as how I have meager savings, I know I must tend to this matter myself, sooner or later. But for now, I've decided to pause for a bit and rethink our conventional approach to life.
As I reflect on this question, I'm reminded of a little brain-teaser that was given to me on a religious retreat some years ago. The leader held up an empty baby-food jar, a handful of uncooked rice and small rock. Put the rice in the jar first, he noted, and it will be impossible to find room for the rock. Place the rock in first, on the other hand, and the rice can be poured in around it. His point was that we should think of the rock as a symbol for God, giving it top priority as the core of our lives and then filling the remaining spaces with everything else.
Now I don't know whether you're a devout Christian, a Jew or Buddhist, an agnostic or an avowed atheist. And to my mind it really doesn't matter. The aforementioned metaphor applies not just to God but to priorities and to the distinctions we make between necessity and luxury.
For me, writing is a necessity, and I've been blessed to have an opportunity to make a living doing it. But now the commercial viability of my writing has come into question. No matter. I write essays and poems because I must. And I will develop at least some of the book ideas I've been contemplating for years because I must do so. Whether they make any money is of secondary importance.
Music and the martial arts are almost as important to me as writing. With this in mind, I've been asking myself, what if I were to build my life around these necessities? Instead of thinking of them as hobbies—activities to be forced into the narrow spaces of "spare time," what if I saw them as the very essence of who I am and what I'm here for?
Increasingly, I am trying to do that—trying to think of these pursuits as essential and to treat the challenge of earning income as an afterthought. It is not a new idea. As a popular self-help book put it years ago, "Do what you love and the money will follow." I continue to have faith in that assertion. But my more fearful friends and family members cringe at the thought. It sounds so impractical, they say—so reckless, so foolish, so extravagant!
Ah, extravagance. In Walden, Thoreau has much to say about that word, which, in our culture, is so unfairly maligned. He reminds us of nature's extravagance—that the wild fruit tree drops its bounty without measure. Some of it rots, some of it is eaten. Meanwhile, countless plants of all kinds cast their seeds to the ground or to the wind. Some will die, some will flourish. No matter, it is all nature's way.
Thoreau wanted, in particular, to write extravagantly. "I fear," he said, that "my expression may not be extra-vagant enough, may not wander far enough beyond the narrow limits of my daily experience...."
I share that goal and desire to live extravagantly as well. In doing so, I look not just to Thoreau and to Emerson but to all great wise men across the span of history. Karen Armstrong, in her marvelous short biography of Buddha, writes that the young Siddatta Gotama "had a yearning for an existence that was 'wide open'...."
Wide open and extravagant and yet with utter simplicity. This is great paradox of life. It seems to me that as we cling with a white-knuckle grip to "practicality" and to definitions of necessity that include food and shelter and designer clothing and SUVs but not the nourishment of the soul to be found in heeding our own calling, we unnecessarily complicate our lives. By contrast, those who live lives of spiritual extravagance—following with abandon the voice within the heart—achieve the ultimate simplicity. Therein also lies the path to joy.
So what is your necessity? Set aside the question of how you're going to pay the bills next month and ask yourself how you would spend your days if you didn't have to think about money. What is your life-work? I'd like to know the answer, and if you'd care to email me, I'd love to have a conversation about it. What could be more important?
—Tom Robotham
tomrobotham@gmail.com