Things I’ve Learned While Roaming the Earth

Lord Byron, the famous English poet, wrote many beautiful poems and quotes to live by.  Among his most famous of works was his poem which begins “She walks in beauty like the night.”  He said something once, a description of human beings, that I’ve always loved, my favorite of his quotes to live by.  Of human beings he said that we are:

“Wrecks of another world, whose ashes are still warm.“

I so often feel this way, a man only seldom doing what he’s really meant to do in life, faintly glowing with purpose at times, but mostly simply doing what’s expected of me.  And yet sometimes, though rarely, the breath of inspiration will blow and stir the embers red and glowing, and I’ll remember again that life is something more than what I have yet lived.  And every time the breath of inspiration stirs, I always look back on my life in distress, wondering why it’s been so long since I’ve really lived my life with resolve, lived deliberately.  Which leads to the second of the quotes to live by.  This one is from another famous poet, Pablo Neruda, who said:

“Love is so short, forgetting is so long.“

It seems as though I am two men.  The one man, which I have been for most of my life, cares little as he goes about his days.  He bides his time in happiness, yet never really in joy; in concern, yet never really in passion; in comfort, yet never really in peace.  But then, invariably, something will happen, some situation will arise, which will cause the breath of inspiration to flow over my ashes, and stir them to a new glow.  I’ll feel as though I’ve been wasting my time just settling for good enough, as though the status quo is all there ever is.  I’ll feel a new resolve to live deliberately and to the full, and I’ll remember again that love is so short and forgetting is so long.  This expression of indefinable resolve and inspiration was once expressed by the philosopher Soren Kierkegaard, who said:

“It seems to him, according to the poet’s explanation, as if something inexpressible thrusts itself forward from his inmost being, the unspeakable, for which indeed language has no vessel of expression.  Even the longing is not the inexpressible itself.  It is only the hastening after it.“

It’s such an odd thing to be struck with a feeling of resolve and inspiration that tells me only that I need to do better — to live more deliberately, to love more fiercely, and to be a better man.  I suppose that Kierkegaard is exactly right, there is no expression for this type of feeling.  So what then, is man to do, when the breath of inspiration blows over the wrecks of his ashes and stirs within him a resolve to be better than what he is?  I suppose that that is why I take such comfort in the Lord, for I know that deep down, my truest and greatest desires can never be met or fulfilled by my own actions, and though it may be inexpressible and unattainable to me, it isn’t to Him.

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