“The things we want are changing, and we don't know or think we know what the other part of that change is,” writes Rebecca Solnit in her delightful book. A Field Guide to Getting Lost.
The quest begins innocently – a birthday, a new bike, Christmas morning await; waiting for the school year to end, or start. Soon, we are waiting for the big break, the big love, the day we finally find ourselves – we are waiting for something or someone to free us from the misery of life as it is, into another wonderful place of life as it could be, all the while coming out of the only place in the storm of uncertainty that comes from outside the giant windows.
It is not at all important that we hold our breath in order to overcome or face disaster. While we are waiting, we are not living.
If we are not careful enough about the intensity of our mind, we can live out our days in this near future life.
That's it Henry James (April 13, 1843–February 28, 1916) examines his 1903 novel Beast in the Forestfound in his collection The Best Kind (public library | public domain) — The story of a man whose whole life, from his earliest memory, was contradicted by “the feeling of being reserved for something rare and strange, possibly wonderful and terrible,” something destined to “happen sooner or later” and, what happens, destroy or remake his life. You call it”i something,” he thinks like a “wild beast” lurking in wait for him, and he spends his life waiting for it, withholding his participation in the event that might have that transformative effect—jumping after some great dream, risking his life for some great cause, love.
It is true, it is a dramatized image of our common curse – the delusional mind “if” that plagues us all, in one way or another, to some degree or another, as we go on living expecting that the next moment will contain what this one does not have and, in giving us the missing piece of fiction that keeps us forever in the warm feelings of happiness of sufficiency, to live our happy life.
James writes:
As it was the time when he would meet his end, so it was the time when his end was to be done; and when he woke up and realized that he was no longer a young person, which was the idea that he was old, just as that was the idea of being weak, he woke up to another side story. Everything hung together; they were subject, he and the greater obscurity, to an equal and indivisible law. When the chances themselves were properly worn out, when the secret of the gods had lost power, perhaps even evaporated, that, and that alone, was a failure. It would not be a failure to be defrauded, disrespected, despised, hanged; it was a failure to have nothing.
When the main character meets a woman who draws him to everyone, he begins to spend time with her but in the end he keeps his heart close, too afraid to love her, thinking that he is protecting her from his dangerous fate, failing to realize that love itself is that great power of self-destruction and transformation, “unusual and unusual” even as the most common human experience.
When Time predicts the possibility, as time always does, he comes to his last count of his tombstone:
To escape would be to love him; then, then he would have lived. He lived – who can say now with what enthusiasm? – because it had chosen itself… The beast was really lying in wait, and the beast in its time had stopped; and then there had come that day in the cold April twilight when, pale, sick, wasted, but beautiful, and perhaps even recovering, she had risen from her chair to stand before him and let him guess. It had come as he had not guessed; it had appeared when he hopelessly turned his back, and the mark, when he left him, had fallen where it was to fall. He had justified his fears and achieved his destiny; he had failed, in the last truth, in all that he should have failed in; and now a sigh rose to his lips… This was knowledge, knowledge under the breath that seemed to be freezing tears in his eyes. With them, not a little, he tried to fix it and hold it; he placed it there in front of him so that he could feel the pain. That at least, late and bitter, there was something of the taste of life. But suddenly the bitterness sickened him, and it was as if, with horror, he saw, in truth, the cruelty of his image, which was set and done. He saw the Forest of his life and saw the Beast lurking; then, as he looked, he saw, like a shaking of the wind, a height, great and terrible, because of the leap that would land him. His eyes darkened – it was close; and, involuntarily turning, from his vision, to avoid it, threw himself, face down, upon the grave.
Coach Anaïs Nin on how reading awakens us to a closer look at life and Mary Oliver on the key to living life to the fullest, then visit Henry James's equally brilliant sister Alice on how to live fully while dying.
