🍂 Footnotes #3 | How to Measure Your Life?
🍂 Footnotes #3 | How to Measure Your Life?
In this edition: W.G. Sebald, Anaïs Nin, Arthur Rimbaud, Alexander the Great and others.
💭 Word of the week: Oubaitoree [Japanese] - meaning every flower blossoms at its own season. It’s an ancient Japanese idea which consists of four kanji: Cherry, Plum, Peach, and Apricot.
"You must listen to the elderly; they're always right." - I used to hear as a kid. "Never disrespect those older than you. They've lived a life, they know what they're saying."
I heard this phrase often while I was growing up. It is particularly popular in the Caucasus - the region where I come from. Old age there is equated with wisdom. However, this equation is perhaps the stupidest notion I've encountered throughout my life.
I'm absolutely certain that one can live until the age of 80 and still remain a complete idiot. Following the advice of people who believe they are wise solely due to their age can even be dangerous. Allow me to explain…
In 2023, I turned 33. Consider Alexander the Great, who conquered the whole world and died at the age of 32. He and I are of the same age, but can you reasonably compare us? Of course not.
When I turned 16, I felt disheartened upon discovering that the French poet Arthur Rimbaud wrote his "Le Dormeur du Val" (The Sleeper in the Valley) at the same age I was at that time. Rimbaud was composing great poetry, while I was consumed by video games.
A bit later during my teenage years, I learned that Joan of Arc died at the age of 19 and altered the course of the Hundred Years' War. Then there was the poet John Keats, who wrote "Ode to a Nightingale"; he died young at the age of 25.
Isaac Newton published his "Philosophiæ Naturalis" at the age of 25. Marie Curie began her groundbreaking research in her early 20s, and Mary Shelley published her story "Frankenstein" at the age of 20.
They say Julius Caesar, when he was in his mid-thirties, stood in front of the statue of Alexander the Great and wept for days. He wept because Alexander had lived a life of much greater intensity, ambition, and depth than he ever could. (At least, that's what Caesar believed at that moment.)
Age has nothing to do with wisdom or the meaningfulness of one's life. Wisdom exists beyond the confines of time and remains independent of it.The quality of life is not gauged solely by the number of years one lives, but rather by the depth of experiences and the courage to take action.
As Seneca wrote:
“The life we receive is not short but we make it so; we are not ill provided but use what we have wastefully.”
Seneca knew that those who don’t waste their lives are bound to greatness.
This is the reason why some people die at the age of 30 and yet achieve more than most of us could even if we lived to be 1000. But there are plenty of examples of great people who squandered their youth, and yet amassed great wisdom in their older age.
Unfortunately, there are also those who squander both their youth and their later years, all the while deceiving themselves by conflating the number of years they've lived with actual wisdom.
The latter type resembles a river which deludes us by seeming deep but turns out to be shallow once we step in it.
I still try to comprehend why do we measure the length of our life solely by the number of orbits the Earth has completed around the sun since our birth?
Confide tibimet.
If Newton really thought that time was a river like the Thames, then where is its source and into what sea does it finally flow? Every river, as we know, must have banks on both sides, so where, seen in those terms, where are the banks of time?
~ from W.G. Sebald’s Austerlitz.
🍂 Footnotes
W.G. Sebald described his stories as ‘documentary fictions’. I’m halfway through his novel Austerlitz and I’ve to say I find it difficult to put it down. With Sebald you never know where the fiction starts and where it ends; what’s invention and what’s documentation.
Here’s a wonderful piece about Sebald published in the New Yorker.
What Does Umberto Eco Think About Art in the Internet Age? This video about Umberto Eco and his lists is changing my mind.
My favourite podcast released an episode on Vikings and their relationship with divine with professor Neil Price, author of Viking’s Way, himself!
A History of the World in 13 Short Poems.
I am currently…
📖 Currently reading: W.G. Sebald’s Austerlitz
🎧 Current audiobook: Magisteria by Nicholas Spencer (still on it)
📚 Book(s) Bought this Week: Stories of Books and Libraries by Various authors
Uploaded this week:
🖋️ Quote of the week
"We do not grow absolutely, chronologically.
We grow sometimes in one dimension, and not in another; unevenly. We grow partially. We are relative. We are mature in one realm, childish in another.
The past, present, and future mingle and pull us backward, forward, or fix us in the present. We are made up of layers, cells, constellations."
~ Anaïs Nin