"Every man has his own destiny," wrote Henry Miller, "the only imperative is to follow it, to accept it, no matter where it leads him." Wise counsel, for sure, but it is seldom followed. Many people, perhaps most people, are so conditioned by family, culture, and experience that they never discover their own destiny, and if they do, they usually lack the courage to follow it. More often than not, they end up leading what Thoreau called "lives of quiet desperation."
Dare to eat of peach? Dare to part your hair from behind? Dare "to force the moment to a crisis?" Not Prufrock. He can do none of these things, for he lost his authenticity long ago, and now thinks it might have been better if he had been "a pair of ragged claws scuttling across the floors of silent seas." His destiny unfulfilled, Prufrock is left with nothing but a sad admission:
I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker,
And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat and snicker,
If Eliot's Lovesong tells us about the tragedy of an inauthentic life, other poems point us to the joy that awaits those who have the courage to recapture their personal authenticity. Two of my favorite poems in this regard are "The Journey," by the wonderful American poet, Mary Oliver, and "Love After Love," by the Caribbean poet, Derek Walcott, who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1992. When I begin to feel the slightest deviation from my own authenticity, I return to these two poems and always find inspiration.
Mary Oliver
The Journey
One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice --
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
"Mend my life!"
each voice cried.
But you didn't stop.
You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations,
though their melancholy
was terrible.
It was already late
enough, and the wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.
But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do --
determined to do
the only thing you could do --
determined to save
the only life you could save.
Derek Walcott
Love After Love
The time will come
when, with elation
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror
and each will smile at the other's welcome,
and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you
all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,
the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.
