Had We But World Enough, and Time

On one of my long, extended trains of thought this week, I started to think about the literature that defines us.

(You'd be amazed how far your mind can wander when you spend hours each day laying in a hammock.)

I don't mean the literature we love the most or enjoy the most. I'm not talking about favorite books or treasured authors. I'm talking about books, poems, essays, plays, whatever, that alter and shape the way we view the world. Concepts, passages, lines and ideas that work their way into our consciousness, ready to be pulled out in a moment of need. A framing of thoughts that informs the way we view a situation, or a phrase from a novel that actually changes the way we act.

Let me be more specific. When I think about the literature that defines me, I immediately think of Marvell. To understand me, to understand the way I view the world and the route by which I choose my actions, I think you have to understand "To His Coy Mistress."

At first read, sure, it's all about a guy trying to charm his reticent lady into bed. While I certainly can identify with his quandary -- oh those reticent, virginal, quaint-honored ladies! -- it's the philosophy of life behind the poem that really draws me in. That striving for the intense experience, that admonishment to make much of time (though that's another poem.) That desperate race to make the sun run, the entreaty to grab pleasure in life we can before it all slips through our fingers.

This weekend, I met a friend of my brother who is one of the most intense kids I've ever encountered. Not intense in a dark-and-tragic sense...rather, you can simply tell that this kid is living life as intensely as he can. He's only 13, but within 30 seconds of meeting him, you know he will be the life of every party he goes to. Every time my brother hangs out with him, it's a little adventure.

Turns out, this kid had cancer when he was 10. It's all clear now, I guess, but he was pretty close to death at one point. And suddenly it all makes sense...when you almost lose your life at such a young age (perhaps even too young an age to truly comprehend the significance of it all), how can you not make every day an adventure? Even if he doesn't know it consciously, how can he not, in his very bones, know that every second had better be lived with intensity because who knows if it'll be your last? I hate to get all cliched and corny here, all sentimental about the shortness of life, but after an experience like that, I feel quite certain that at his back this kid, too, always hears "Time's wingèd chariot hurrying near."

And so I come back to Marvell:

Let us roll all our strength and all
Our sweetness up into one ball,
And tear our pleasures with rough strife
Through the iron gates of life.

At times, I feel almost frantic with the need to do great things with small amount of time I feel I've been given. (Be that another year or another 80; they both feel far too short). I know there is far more out there to see, to do, to taste, to touch, to read, to learn, to visit, to know, than I can possibly achieve. I'm sure I don't have world enough, or time. I'll be lucky in my life to barely break the surface. And it drives me nuts when I see others caught up in inertia, unable to understand the urgency of grabbing what pleasures we can, now, before it' s too late.

So if I seem a bit crazed to you at times, a bit urgent when urgency seems unwarranted, a bit anxious for no discernible reason at all, understand it's only because I'm trying to tear through the iron gates of life... and sometimes they feel rusted shut.