As you set out for Ithaca hope that your road is a long one,
full of adventures, full of discovery . . .
Hope your road is a long one . . .
May there be many summer mornings when, with what
pleasure, what joy, you enter harbors you’re seeing for
the first time . . . may you visit many Egyptian cities to
learn and go on learning from their scholars.
Keep Ithaca always in your mind.
Arriving there is what you’re destined for.
But don’t hurry the journey at all.
Better if it lasts for years, so you’re old by the time you
reach the island, wealthy with all you’ve gained
on the way . . .
— Constantine Cavafy (1863-1933), “Ithaca”
Born of Greek parents, Cavafy spent most of his life as a journalist in Egypt. As with a beloved song, I never tire of “Ithaca,” his lovely poem about the wanderings of Odysseus after the Trojan War. Really talented poets can extract the essence of an idea or emotion and express it with a great economy of words. Cavafy and I shall never know each other, but I feel as if I know his mind and that he would understand mine because he expresses my own feelings and insights about the process of living.
I wrote last week that one has visions of high adventures and great achievements when one is young, but time passes; and one is no longer young. Sometimes it takes too much energy to return to distant harbors that one has visited, let alone explore new ones.
Thoreau wrote, “ . . . be a Columbus to whole new continents and worlds within you, opening new channels . . . of thought . . .”
I have reached a dangerous stage of life where it would so easy to become entrenched in a rigid mindset, dismissing out of hand ideas or people with whom I disagree. I hope to go on learning and to become wiser than I have been.
Now that I am old — and, brother, do I hate to admit that! — time is of the essence. I must constantly ask myself, “What do I want the shape and content of my life to be?” I must look into my mind as in a mirror and ask, “What image of myself do I want to create and project?”
In one of Jan Karon’s delightful Mitford books, Father Tim visits Ireland with his cousin and his cousin’s wife, Katherine. They set off one day in a rented car. The inn’s owner has packed a picnic basket, including a rhubarb tart that’s hot from the oven. Its delectable aroma overcomes Katherine. Exclaiming that she can’t wait another minute, she brings the car to a screeching halt, and they devour the tart. She finishes her share, recklessly wipes her mouth on the hem of her dress and says, “There!” “That’s how I want to live the rest of my life.”
The older one becomes, the more difficult it is to achieve spontaneity. One has one’s comfortable routines and habits built up over many years that bind and entrap one. One is afraid to be spontaneous. One doesn’t want to take risks. Perhaps one worries about what other people will think or one becomes cautious to the point of inertia.
Life’s possibilities are infinite, but its probabilities are finite. Common sense tells me that both my possibilities and probabilities are going to become more and more limited. Perhaps this is a good thing as it may force me to nourish what is truly of value to me and throw the rest overboard.
One of Karon’s characters, paraphrasing the Bible said, “Cast your bread upon the waters, and it may come back buttered toast.” Next week: Some people who found buttered toast. wclarke@comcast.net P.S. Squirrelie is being naughty!