The secret to joyful living

I don’t get people who say they don’t want to get hurt. Who close themselves off to pain. Who do this because they maintain the only way to live a life that is scary and dangerous is to find safety in shelter and protection from risk. Who live an avoidance that amounts to a small, harbored existence.

To hell with that! Johnny Cash is singing right now and he knew. Although he was a Christian he understood a lot about life and suffering, more so when he was singing Nine Inch Nails:

“I hurt myself today
To see if I still feel
I focus on the pain
The only thing that's real.”

Lately I have been obsessed with Nietzsche who said: "The secret of a joyful life is to live dangerously." Imagine that. Joy. Bliss. Easily found out there in the darkness, on the edge, strewn abundantly across a pioneering path. That happiness lives breathing deeply in discovery. That you meet it again and again in great adventure where there is no full stop because you never see the end. In heroic gnosis where one wades ever fully into perpetual experience to encounter deepening truths.

My friend and fellow writer Alasdair Cameron can’t sleep so he’s been reading “A Devil's Chaplain: Reflections on Hope, Lies, Science, and Love”. This is a book of remarkable essays written by Richard Dawkins. Al tells me of one called “The Joy of Living Dangerously: Sanderson of Oundle.” In this essay Dawkins tells us to forget about the exams and the league tables. He says that real education is about: “the power of knowledge and the thrill of discovery.”

In this essay Frederick William Sanderson (1857-1922) who intuitively knew how the best life was lived is quoted by Dawkins as saying:

"I agree with Nietzsche that 'The secret of a joyful life is to live dangerously.' A joyful life is an active life - it is not a dull, static state of so-called happiness. Full of the burning fire of enthusiasm, anarchic, revolutionary, energetic, daemonic, Dionysian, filled to overflowing with the terrific urge to create - such is the life of the man who risks safety and happiness for the sake of growth and happiness."

Sanderson’s own words are a living and liberating tribute to a headmaster who demanded that laboratories be left unlocked so the boys at Oundle School could explore unfettered and unsupervised. During Sanderson’s time the school library was never locked. One of the school boys – now a man – speaks about being discovered in that library in the dead of the night by his headmaster.

Instead of booming admonishment Sanderson sat down next to him and nudged him deeper into adventure: “He began to talk to me of discovery and the values of discovery, the incessant reaching out of men towards knowledge and power, the significance of this desire to know and make and what we in the school were doing in that process. We talked, he talked for nearly an hour in that still nocturnal room. It was one of the greatest, most formative hours in my life...”

As I read Dawkin’s essay and marvel at Sanderson, Johnny Cash is singing:

“Everyone I know
Goes away in the end
You could have it all
My empire of dirt
I will let you down
I will make you hurt”

This song, Sanderson and Dawkin’s essay is a reminder of how little we know about life. How the most dangerous people are the most certain. Those who would have us believe or have faith in how the story should unravel or end. That the most foolish people are those who keep themselves in the dark for fear of pain or suffering or experiencing disappointment. This despite the startling truth that all of life’s inevitable miseries will find us all, no matter where we seek to hide.

It makes me certain that great men and women are those who live fearlessly knowing that their hearts will be broken countless times as they wade deeper and deeper into delicious discovery. That the greatest people are those who know this secret and inspire others to live its indisputable truth. The libertarians who encourage bright young minds to recklessly ransack the world’s wisdom and burn their fingers on the blistering heat of experience.

For who can sincerely and authentically offer another protection from hurt? It is coming to get us all regardless of whether we hide or live fully with courage and curiosity, craving the great adventure.

“Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead.” Let’s run into truth, wisdom and experience and live like heroes before we’re dead.

Comments

[Terry Danks]

Mandy you describe exactly how I live my life; you have managed to put it into words. Thanks.

[Gary]

The Road Not Taken

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim
Because it was grassy and wanted wear,
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I marked the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I,
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

Robert Frost

[Trishen]

Mands

This spoke to me china. I've lived dangerously and now seem to be stuck in this safe zone and I feel the joy of living being suppressed, squeezed until all that remains is an empty shell.

Now if only i knew how to live dangerously once again...

[Ramon]

Very inspiring, Mands. However, I do feel that who we are, and who we're busy being grown into (does that make sense?) has absolutely nothing to do with choice. I really believe that we have no choice in this world. You writing this blog, me responding; it was bound to happen. You 'living dangerously' again, the guy a few doors down locked in his study with his dick in his daughter's mouth - bound to happen. We can't change anything. Nothing matters. So live dangerously. Or don't.

Ag, what the fuck do I know anyway. Cool blog.

PS - Check out the Johnny Cash 'Hurt' video on Youtube.

[Gio]

This posting has bubbled around my head all day. If we gain more than the pain of the hurt we should definitely. But pain has a purpose. It's to show us that something can do harm. The hot oven burns...don't touch it again.

Which does not necessarily mean avoidance (gravity can hurt) - but that we should learn (flight is a solution). I think that's our greatest talent - we can learn/create/imagine. So we should not carelessly seek pain.

But yes - I am challenged to face the comfort zones that anesthetise my life. Nothing ventured - nothing gained. Insanity: Doing the same thing over and over again - yet expecting a different result.

And just because it hurt last time - does not mean it will this time. Even if it does: Get up - dust off - try again. Hopefully with a little more wisdom.

So yes: Weigh the risks - consider the lessons of previous pains. Launch out and live. Thanks Mands. You have made me think!

[morts]

aaah mands. you know me. no pain = no creation. there is no greater slavery than that state imposed by disassociation (self imposed in my case).

art is suffering.

[Mandy de Waal]

I have often thought about writing just for the sake of writing. The pure process of putting words down. How it feels. What it means to me. How it shapes my life and thinking. Often the purist in me wants to say... no no. This is what it is for me. The writing is just about the process... just about the words.

And then I come here and find that I am community. Surrounded by these thoughts like a community of intelligence threaded from disparate worlds that reach out to touch me. And then I know all over again why I write, why I love it so much.

Thank you.

[Max Kaizen]

I am so damn sorry it took me so long to read your work.
The excellent Harriet Rubin had a column in Fast Company called "Living Dangerously". This was one of my faves: http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/36/hrubin.html

[Mandy de Waal]

Hey Max... will have to read that Rubin article. Sounds awesome.