What to Do

It’s a relief to come back here and write a post. I’ve endured weeks of “nothing to say”. Instead I pursued my latest book project, alluded to in the previous post, which has involved pruning, refining, selecting, truncating, rewriting—in short editing—what I’ve written over the last ten years. As a task it’s a long winding road, with few if any signposts, and nobody to accompany me but my old friend, (or enemy) Perseverance, whose middle names are Blind Obstinacy and Obsession. Today it seems an unwarranted burden to be weighed down by a ten years’ questionable legacy, leaving scant regard for the fresh possibility of each new day. The best thing about burdens is the moment of saying “This is not me but an encumbrance. I shall drop it and move on, lightened.” It is enough to be lightened: “enlightenment” can look after itself. My own writings have told me so, though they are mingled with dross. Optimistically I imagine that if the scaffolding (necessary at the time) is removed, a cathedral might be visible. I think of Michelangelo, chipping away at a marble block to release the muscular form he envisages within. But who am I to judge anything, to separate the grain from the chaff? When in the wrong space, I only make everything worse. “First, do no harm, “ says Hippocrates. “Beware of mauvaise foi,” says Jean-Paul Sartre.

Bad faith: where human beings under pressure from social forces adopt false values and disown their innate freedom hence acting inauthentically

I should clarify that in my case this bad faith has struck nowhere but in the sensitive area of literary pretensions, and has left me

Listless: destitute of relish or inclination for some specified object or pursuit . . . characterized by unwillingness to move, act, or make any exertion

—to the point where I was convinced that my health was declining generally through old age. It’s hypochondria, of course, seems to be hereditary*. Not far under the surface, everything is still good. I remain astonished by the world’s beauty, the perfection of a tree in June. Why don’t I see the perfection and beauty of other human beings in the same way? Occasionally I do, as when the other evening at 7.45 I went “round the corner” to the nearest supermarket (actually several corners but a five-minute walk anyhow). Everyone was smiling, carefree. It was not hard to love thy neighbour as thyself. Whether it was the hour, some late sunshine after the rain, or simply the eye of the beholder, I cannot say. All I know is, it didn’t last, but progressed to a stalemate, a crisis of listlessness, that I could almost see redemption on the horizon, because that’s how it works. One has to hit bottom first, or at least I do. I haven’t found a better way yet.

This morning I could see the nature of the problem, or at least describe it in words: I don’t know what to do. And then I remembered writing on this very topic ten years ago†:

It was today, whilst kissing the sky, that the answer came to me. “All we ever need to know is what to do.”

Your knowing is not my knowing. And tomorrow our knowing has to start anew.

So now I am humbled by the insight of what I wrote ten years ago. I don’t know what to do, so of course I am listless. As ever, my body is wiser than that falsely-praised pseudo-muse Perseverance (or Blind Obstinacy and Obsession, as she’s called by those she’s unable to seduce).

Why don’t I know what to do? Because my knowing has to start anew, each day.

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* In retrospect, it turns out not to have been hypochondria at all but a slow-growing lymphoma. Call it mortality, or entropy, but our wings get clipped sooner or later.
† See “All we ever need to know”