PostPoems Be Artistic. Be Creative. Be Inspired!

I am not the only one who occasionally thinks that my favorite occupation, writing, is a waste of time. I do have a few fans; my style is amply praised although my opinions are sometimes despised. Nevertheless, my preoccupation with my avocation has been the subject of quite a few sarcastic remarks and caustic suggestions, such as "Get a life" and "Get a job." I sense that my caustic critics sense that they are wasting their own lives, hence they resent the work that I do with the leisure time that I purchased with the nickels I earned doing very well what they grudgingly do: "work."



People who are pleased with their jobs bear me no ill will simply because I honor my calling; they might not think me talented enough to make a small fortune or even a living at it, but, as long as the fool is happy, so to speak, more power to him. I really do not expect a living or a fortune from my beloved although I would be glad to have both to support my affections. As for talent, I am vain enough to believe that I have a little; at least I have enough of it to be a fool for my art. Still, I confess that there are rare occasions when I suspect that I am wasting my time, not because I think there must be a living in it, but because I doubt that many people besides myself will read my work. Nevertheless, after a brief pause, I continue, because my job calls me to work.



Furthermore, in my work I feel that I am enough for myself; not entirely in the selfish sense, for I am, like all persons, a socialized individual; as such, in the absence of an external audience, I am a self-critic with several selves who praise and condemn the work at hand from several points of view. The more "my" work progresses the more I feel that I am doing the right thing even though there is no fame or fortune in it.



Soren Kierkegaard, an author whom I like to read on Sunday mornings, did not want for money. His inherited fortune allowed him to ponder and to write at great length, sometimes with considerable insight into subjects he had scarce personal experience with. He was a perspicacious student of suffering human existence, yet I often beg to disagree with him because I feel that his version of existence is too abstract, too withdrawn from active life in the objective world. But sometimes I understand him all too well, and that is to say that I am also out of touch, that I agree with him in his intense self-preoccupation, which he somehow justified in his virtual adoration of the single-individual category - the universal individual, or individuals denuded of superficial differences.



Once upon a Sunday when Kansas City was in the midst of an ice storm, I reluctantly put on my coat, put my Scotch-taped copy of Either/Or into my back pocket, and walked several blocks over the ice to have breakfast at the Cup and Saucer on Delaware Street. I enjoyed the ice crunching under my cheap but hardy summer shoes, and twelve degrees Fahrenheit helped cheer me up and whet my appetite along the way - I wondered if Soren liked to take strolls in ice storms. After sitting down at the restaurant and drinking a cup of strong coffee, I happened to open Either/Or to the pages upon which these notable paragraphs appeared:



"What I accomplish follows upon my job as a piece of good luck in which I may well take delight but which I dare not impute absolutely to myself. A beech grows up, forms its crown of leaves, and men delight to sit in its shade. If it were to become impatient, if it were to say, 'Here in this place where I stand there hardly every comes a living being. What use is it for me to grow, to shoot out my branches, what do I accomplish by it?' It would with that only delay its growth, and perhaps there came a wayfarer who said, "If this tree instead of being stunted had been a leafy tree, I now might have taken rest in its shade.' Imagine that the tree had been able to hear!"



"Every man can accomplish something.... every man has his job.... Accomplishing, then, is identical with doing one's job. Think of a man who is profoundly and sincerely moved; to him it never occurs to question whether he will accomplish something or not; it is only that an idea is intent upon realizing itself in him with all its might. Let him be an orator, a priest, or whatever you you will. He does not speak to the multitude in order to accomplish something, but the melody within him must ring out, only then does he feel happy. Do you believe that he accomplished less than one who became puffed up with idea the idea of what he himself will accomplish? Think of an author; to him it never occurs to question whether he will obtain a reader or whether he will accomplish anything by his book; he is only intent upon apprehending the truth. Do you believe that such a writer accomplishes less than one whose pen is under the supervision and direction of the thought that he will accomplish anything?"



"The ethical thesis that every man has a calling is the expression for the fact that there is a rational order of things in which every man, if he will, fills his place in such a way that he expresses at once the universal-human and the individual. With this way of regarding it has existence become less beautiful? One has no occasion to rejoice in an aristocracy which is founded upon an accident and accidentally founded upon it; no, one has a realm of the gods. When the talent is not construed as a call... then the talent is absolutely egoistic." (emphases added).



Well, then, doing one's job is the universal, and doing it according to one's talent is the particular. Ideally, talent calls a man to his job, jobs and talents are perfectly matched, and there is a job for everyone in our rational order. If accomplishment is identical to doing one's job, then, as long as one does his job, he accomplishes enough. As long as everyone just does his or her job, everything will fall into place. But we know better. Therefore it is necessary to be a beech tree and grow the best we can. In fact, that is our job.