About a year ago, I read a collection of poetry known as The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. As its name somewhat hints at, it's a Persian collection, translated in the nineteenth century into English by Edward Fitzgerald and given its title because all the works are attributed to Omar Khayyam, a Persian poet, mathematician, and astronomer (I really love the resumes of scholars from before 1700 or so). Omar Khayyam wrote roughly two thousand poems, or at least one thousand surviving poems, and 110 four-line separate stanzas are including in the Rubaiyat, which is derived from the Persian word for four and basically means "quatrain" (a ruba'i is a two-line stanza with two parts). Fitzgerald took liberty with the poems . . . he translated based on concept, not word-by-word. I prefer this method; nonetheless, I fear that he probably diluted even that, because if you read about him, he just kind of seems like a jerk.
Anyway, I digress. The theme of the lines are all roughly the same . . . A sort of nihilism, tasting slightly of Ecclesiastes in the Bible, and softened by an appreciation of Earth's natural beauty. The seventh:
"Come, fill the Cup, and in the fire of Spring
Your Winter-garment of Repentance fling;
The Bird of Time has but a little way
To flutter - and the Bird is on the Wing."
Followed by:
"Whether at Naishapur or Babylon,
Whether the Cup with sweet or bitter run,
The Wine of Life keeps oozing drop by drop,
The Leaves of Life keep falling one by one."
I take his poems not to be a preoccupation with mortality or obsession with death, but rather this intoxicating celebration of life, the very mystery and miracle of it, coupled with an admonishing reminder that life is short, it is a wave on an ocean, ash in the wind.
"Were it not Folly, Spider-like to spin
The Thread of present Life away to win -
What? For ourselves, who know not if we shall
Breathe out the very Breath we now breathe in!"
Your life, your thought and time and energy, is the most precious, unique, timeless currency you have. It is you, you as a being, you as an individual, and what you pour your time into, you pour yourself. To pursue the act of living without actively considering to what (whom?) you offer You is just an immense waste. And perhaps, one day, you will find yourself chasing after the wind, meaningless, meaningless, everything is meaningless . . . There is nothing new under the sun. We research where we open 401(k) accounts so fastidiously, and yet we fail to consider where we place ourselves and the people we love and the people who love us. And what is more valuable than humanity, collective and singular?
"In these bodies we will live, in these bodies we will die / Where you invest your love, you invest your life." - Mumford and Sons, Awake My Soul.
It seems so easy to sacrifice, to sacrifice your interests and dreams and - well, I guess I'll just say it - happiness for the promise of betterment, of comfort, of prestige and respect. It's interesting how hollow those things can be. And it is interesting how one small concession here, another there, can add up. Remember, the whole is the sum of its parts, and sometimes more.
This painting is entitled A Few Small Nips (that's what it says in Spanish at the top), by Frida Kahlo. She's speaking specifically of the sacrifices women make, and even more specifically, after the Mexican Revolution, but broad messages speak out beyond their frames.
Continual sacrifice of happiness for the attainment of a goal that will leave you hungrier than when you began can cause you to bleed to death. To support oneself and to be secure is to be an adult. Money, envy, materialism, the endless racetrack, is to lose happiness, and maybe to be insane. The pressure to lose your identity, the individualism that you were blessed with and what makes your soul both vibrate and fall silent, is enormous, but it leads to the death of your potential of self-fulfillment. Preaching is ridiculous, but it makes me sad to see so many forget the rioting and quiet joys of the heart, adventure, experience, love.
I refuse to be told who, or what, I am supposed to be, how I'm supposed to become it, whether or not I can respect myself, or where to invest myself. I refuse to give over to selfishness, I refuse to abandon responsibility to my own person and to others to adhere to some kind of social creed I don't believe in. I pursue a balance: a balance in which even my duty is a part of my happiness, and sought out with love. This balance is part of being human, and being human, being organic, holding the capacity for wonder and reason and dream, is the most celebrated ability on Earth. It seems we are so eager to renounce it.
"Alike for those who for TODAY prepare,
And those that after some TOMORROW stare,
A Muezzin from the Tower of Darkness cries,
'Fools! Your Reward is neither Here nor There.'
Myself when young did eagerly frequent
Doctor and Saint, and heard great argument
About it and about: but evermore
Came out by the same door as in I went.
With them the seed of Wisdom did I sow,
And with my own hand wrought to make it grow;
And this was all the Harvest that I reap'd -
'I came like Water, and like Wind I go.'"
