Author: Gray Haskins

Alain :

« Le travail est la meilleure et la pire des choses ; la meilleure, s’il est libre, la pire, s’il est serf. J’appelle libre au premier degré le travail réglé par le travailleur lui-même, d’après son savoir propre et selon l’expérience, comme d’un menuisier qui fait une porte. Mais il y a de la différence si la porte qu’il fait est pour son propre usage, car c’est alors une expérience qui a de l’avenir ; il pourra voir le bois à l’épreuve, et son œil se réjouira d’une fente qu’il avait prévue. Il ne faut point oublier cette fonction d’intelligence, qui fait des passions si elle ne fait des portes. »

[Work is the best and the worst of things; the best if it’s free, the worst if it’s suffered. I call free in the first degree the work regulated by the worker himself, after his own knowledge and according to experience, like that of a carpenter who makes a door. But there is a difference if the door he makes is for his own use, because it is then an experience that has a future; he will be able to see the wood put to the test, and his eye will rejoice at a split that he predicted. This function of the intelligence can’t be forgotten, which makes passions if it doesn’t make doors.]

*

My eye landed on this propos of Alain’s this morning, as I was sitting down for breakfast. That last line struck me the most and I tried to memorize it before making my breakfast. 

I think of this a lot these days. How susceptible I am! And how frequently, how regularly I suffer from my imagination (or my untethered intelligence) day after day after day! I sit down at work and, what I have to do not occupying my mind at all, the work being mechanical and mindless, my mind flies and creates a thousand thousand problems out of thin air, the nightmares becoming reality and I sitting there quite still in my chair… 

I’m so used to this, it’s so everyday, so bound up in my experience of life, —it’s fair I think to say that it’s the source of most of my problems today—, that it’s a little bit embarrassing to say it at all. I’m not alone I know. 

‘We all live in our dream’, as someone’s said somewhere, or Shakespeare’s (isn’t it?) ‘we are the stuff of dreams’. [I looked it up: ‘we are such stuff as dreams are made on’, Prospero in The Tempest.] This is obviously true. 

There are many of us who believe in the news, (of course among every individual there being infinite degrees of variety in these beliefs, in intensity, in depth, in direction and variability), there are many of us who believe in sports or music or streaming shows (every individual with an absolutely unique and personal fandom, subject to change with every mood and every hour); no one believes in anything the same way; and, as it’s good to remember, we change all the time, all of us in our feeling for everything (for ourselves and for our work, for where we are and the world around us, the people and the ideas we pass our days with, etc. etc.) caught up in between ‘the being born and the passing away’ (as I recently read somewhere in French, in a book on Montaigne; ask me about it if you’re curious). 

I love that phrase (I don’t have the French text near me): ‘the being born and the passing away’; we can think here simply of mood, of the objects of our attention and desire (and our feeling for them), what we feel bound to thinking about or getting done; it isn’t the same in the afternoon as it was in the morning, or at 6pm at as it was 5pm; it’s flux, or constant change, and nothing more (and for all of us the same, to the very end).

Sanity supposes patience, and a sense of limits. You can’t do everything at once. You would work and relax at the same time, but you can’t. 

Knowing when you’re tired, and seriously responding, is important. Knowing too when it’s worth surmounting, or necessary to surmount, the desire to stop working, that matters too. But it’s true that there’s no rule here but feeling. It’s in you or it’s not. Sometimes there’s a push from you don’t know where; sometimes there’s not. 

Life drags. And then suddenly speeds up. Flux and no more; back and forth, again and again; in infinite degrees. 

Il faut vouloir

que la vie soit bonne ; 

et d’abord 

il faut vouloir

qu’on puisse le vouloir. 

*

[You have to want

life to be good;

and first of all

you have to want

to be able to want it.]

*

L’optimisme n’est point de fait ;

il est de volonté. 

*

[Optimism isn’t a reality;

it’s all in the will.]

*

L’orgueil qui méprise 

n’est que vanité. 

*

[Pride that scorns 

is only vanity.]

*

S’observer,

c’est se changer,

se remettre en bon ordre, 

chercher ce qu’on veut, 

le trouver,

l’approuver,

le faire. 

*

[To observe oneself

is to change oneself, 

is to put oneself back in good order,

is to look for what you want,

find it,

approve it

and do it.]

Even a perfect effort —does such a thing exist? Let’s just say, our best effort— leaves something to be hoped for, could be better. 

What’s bad is losing oneself in the imagination.

Perhaps we could ‘lose ourself in our imagination’ responsibly — I think of great artists, poets and writers —, but this supposes presence, a strict barring-off of the superfluous…

What I mean when I say ‘lose oneself in the imagination’ is what I know from experience every day of my life: the roaming mind, in spite of ourselves running away… 

What’s my problem? The tragic view (“it’s just this way”); self-pity; resentment of myself and (inevitably in consequence, the two going together necessarily, born of the same mistake) others, what I see in the mirror and around me. 

I am trying and I do some good work. There are small wins. In the midst of them, of course, there are little failures too, little defects and ugly spots; but, if we are wise, we overlook these things and go on (we try to at least).

It is never perfect and it never quite matches the image we have in our mind. In our mind it’s perfect; in reality it can’t be, and naturally so, humanly so; if we find it perfect it’s because we make it so, that is, we believe it so, it’s just how we feel in a certain moment; inevitably the next hour or the next day, soon enough in any case, it’s not going to be perfect when we think of it. We have a ‘perfect’, our ‘perfect’, moment to moment, but it doesn’t exist objectively, it’s only in ourselves in a particular moment or two; it’s only our own, and it’s bound to change, hour to hour.

I fall to thinking so easily. I think of that meme, the fellow with his brain, an oversized potato, too big for his head and falling out on the floor. It’s not intelligence; it’s fear; it’s a lot of my life spent in the corner, watching others act and thinking instead of joining them, not daring to act myself, because afraid: full of thoughts.

Two quotes from Alain to end this thing:

« Notre pensée n’est pas ainsi faite 

qu’elle puisse marcher la première ; 

qui pense ses actions

n’agit jamais. » 

*

[Our thinking isn’t made in such a way

that it can go first [before action];

those who think out their actions

never act.]

*

« L’imagination est peut-être

la plus redoutable ennemie 

de l’homme pensant, 

par ceci 

qu’avoir peur fait croire,

et croire qu’on a vu. »

*

[The imagination is perhaps

the most fearful enemy

of the thinking person, 

in that

having fear makes you believe,

and makes you believe you have seen.]

When I despair, when I resent myself for what I am, or someone else for what they are, or where I am and what I do, or where I was and what I did, for what it is or for what it was, I am duped: I am falling for a trick, a lie. 

My past, the decisions I made and the consquences of them, is a matter of indifference. It is that, or it is a matter for reflection: specifically, how can it help me enjoy today, or live better today, —there’s little difference between the two, or there should be at least—, where I am and what I’m doing right now?

Every moment, at all times, I have the capacity to be well. If not physically, morally at least; all it takes is honesty, or lucidity. What depends on me? What’s in my control? and what is not?

It’s true that, if I’m overwhelmed by stress or anxiety, it’s less likely that I’ll be capable of giving myself an honest account of what matters (what depends on me and what doesn’t, what I owe and what I don’t, etc.), of recentering, or retaking myself, of finding in myself a sort of moral balance, a sense of myself as I am (without hate or fear; simply, honestly; in good faith). Sometimes it’s just a matter of patience or endurance, of acquiescence: accepting the discomfort or pain or awkwardness of where you are and supporting it, knowing it will pass soon enough.

Nothing is ever pure in us: happiness, contentment, satisfaction; unhappiness, discontent, dissatisfaction; contradictions are always there, contradictory feelings. We are happy but a little sad too; sad but not completely sad; disappointed but a little hopeful, at least in a vague and hard-to-explain way. It’s always like that. 

We can’t control the result of our actions; all we have is our will. Why do something if it may fail? (Or be awkward, imperfect?) Because action is better than doing nothing (it certainly, if only in the end, feels better), and waiting for perfection or conditions that don’t exist and will never come is a perfect waste; we are born to act.

I write and I see that what I write is not perfect. I see that, when I think of my favorite writers and what they write, my own just doesn’t compare. But this is not good: my own has the advantage, and it’s a serious one, of being my own and no one else’s, of giving me a satisfaction (or, of course, a dissatisfaction) that no other writing can give me. It depends on me; it’s born of my unique experience, of my own mind (and body, and heart).

You see sometimes that, when you’re starting to suffer in yourself, when you realize that you’re falling in a certain direction in yourself, when your worst thoughts become loud and irresistible: sometimes you see that you have a choice: that, if you want (and you really want), you can resist them; you can conquer them, you can refuse them, you can deny them, you can say no. They may stick around and make noise, but if you decide that they are not yours, not your own, not your thoughts, but traitors, liars, cowards, cheats, it is only a matter of time and patience before they leave.

Hearing the bad thoughts blabbing on in your head and choosing to go on anyway, better than them, not them, stronger. Choosing to act on the good ones, even if they’re quiet, even if they’re apparently far, choosing to remember in act, trying to see, however imperfect, one effort after another.

Like that.

Mechanical unhappiness, disorder, instability… 

‘We are full of mechanical actions’. 

Mechanical being. The will, the body, the mind, the soul: on autopilot. 

Let the news, social media direct.

Or the people I live with every day, whose voices I hear and listen to, the conversations I hear and partake in.

The little griefs that show up every day, annoyances, pains. 

‘Dans un homme qui sait vouloir…’

What I read walking into my room, peeking at the doorway (where the quote from Alain is posted on a sticky-note). 

‘In a man (in a woman, in someone) who knows how to want…’ 

Do I know how to want?

At times. But most of the time no, I’m led by habit, mechanical manoeuvres (even the griefs, the bad thoughts). 

We fall into a routine of something, that begins to play out to more or less the same tune, over and over and over.

Know how to want?

That is to know how to change; to be willing to do what you (or the mechanical part of you that clings to the safe and easy, the path of least resistance) — to be willing to do what you do not want to do (the higher part of you wants to, that part of you that knows that what’s difficult and painful is necesarry to growth).

Qui donc dira à l’homme :

« Tu es toi-même.

À ta manière donc, 

et selon ton essence,

tu dois comprendre,

aimer,

vouloir ;

enfin,

découvrir en toi

ta propre ressemblance ». [—Alain]

*

[Who then will say to you:

“You are yourself. 

In your way then,

and according to your essence, 

you must understand

and love

and want;

put concisely,

discover in yourself

your own resemblance.]

Trust the feeling, the instinct, 

what you feel but can’t explain,

what you know but can’t find the words for, 

even if it frightens you,

even if it confuses you, 

even if it seems too much, too big, too great for you,

too big for your head or your heart, 

to ask too much, —

trust it anyway

and to the end,

as you can,

and 

like that, 

you know the way. 

L’homme se forme 

par la peine ;

ses vrais plaisirs,

il doit les gagner, 

il doit les mériter.

Il doit donner

avant de recevoir.

C’est la loi. 

*

[We are formed

by the pains we take; 

our real pleasures,

we have to win,

we have to merit.

You have to give

before you receive.

It’s the law.]

*

C’est en adorant

que l’on comprend.

*

[It’s in adoration

that we understand.]

*

Notre pensée

n’est pas ainsi faite

qu’elle puisse marcher la première ; 

qui pense ses actions

n’agit jamais. 

*

[Our thinking

doesn’t work in such a way

that it can walk first;

one who thinks their actions

never acts.]

*

L’homme n’est heureux

que de vouloir

et d’inventer.

*

[We aren’t happy

but in wanting

and inventing.]

*

Certes

on n’est pas 

ce qu’on veut

mais on n’est

quoi que ce soit

que si d’abord

on veut. 

*

[Certainly 

we aren’t 

what we want to be

but we aren’t

anything at all

unless in the first place

we want to be something.]

*

Voir suppose regarder,

et regarder

c’est douter.

*

[Seeing implies looking,

and to look

is to doubt.]

*

Juger, décider, agir,

voilà 

les fonctions de l’âme.

*

[To judge, to decide, and to act,

these are the functions of the soul.]

*

Le fait n’est

ni vrai

ni juste

parce qu’il n’est jamais 

ni faux

ni injuste ;

c’est l’homme pensant

qui est vrai

et juste.

*

[The fact is neither

true

nor just

because it is never

false

or unjust;

it is the thinking person

who is true

and just.]

We are drowning in clichés, 

in general ideas 

impossible to prove or disprove,

in lazy thoughts

and small talk,

gossip,

taken seriously, 

bored

and hungry minds

fed on, 

that only know

hot air,

casually cruel

and careless,

the kind of talk

that kills,

spoils,

wastes the heart,

the capacity to see

the suffering we all bear

and naturally,

every one of us,

and every hour,

every day,

‘blind men

battering blind men’,

sufferers who,

suffering,

make suffer,

embarrassed,

ashamed,

but proud,

and scared,

insecure if anything,

and desperate.