One of the central ‘characters’/‘personalities’/‘people’ on the latest episode of Made in Chelsea said something philosophically intriguing and apposite on an almost neo-Absurdist level of Nietzschean angst and quasi-Hellenic undespachungzi with an undertone of Habermasian schadenfreude, intentionally. When explaining why she and her partner go so well together, she claimed the reason was because ‘he doesn’t take life too seriously; I hate people that take life really seriously’ (aside: Apart from the oh so subtle point that ‘people that take life really seriously’ in this context typically means People who challenge me in ways I don’t really want to be challenged (usually morally), it is in this author’s HO that the semi-colon was not present in the script, but the actor’s mixture of unparalleled Day-Lewisean intensity and Artaudean spatial dominance unflinchingly brought it to life – it was great). Here are some reasons why this philosopher-queen was wrong and daft:
‘How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.’ Annie Dillard
‘I hated childhood
I hate adulthood
And I love being alive.’ Mary Ruefle, ‘Provenance’, Trances of the Blast
‘Yeah, well, likewise. Whatever.’ Lucy Watson, Made in Chelsea
‘I grew up in a place called Norfolk.’ ‘I know Norfolk. Is it near Somerset?’ ‘I don’t know.’ JP and Binky, Made in Chelsea
Nazim Hikmet, ‘On Living’:
I
Living is no laughing matter:
you must live with great seriousness
like a squirrel, for example–
I mean without looking for something beyond and above living,
I mean living must be your whole occupation.
Living is no laughing matter:
you must take it seriously,
so much so and to such a degree
that, for example, your hands tied behind your back,
your back to the wall,
or else in a laboratory
in your white coat and safety glasses,
you can die for people–
even for people whose faces you’ve never seen,
even though you know living
is the most real, the most beautiful thing.
I mean, you must take living so seriously
that even at seventy, for example, you’ll plant olive trees–
and not for your children, either,
but because although you fear death you don’t believe it,
because living, I mean, weighs heavier.
II
Let’s say we’re seriously ill, need surgery–
which is to say we might not get up
from the white table.
Even though it’s impossible not to feel sad
about going a little too soon,
we’ll still laugh at the jokes being told,
we’ll look out the window to see if it’s raining,
or still wait anxiously
for the latest newscast. . .
Let’s say we’re at the front–
for something worth fighting for, say.
There, in the first offensive, on that very day,
we might fall on our face, dead.
We’ll know this with a curious anger,
but we’ll still worry ourselves to death
about the outcome of the war, which could last years.
Let’s say we’re in prison
and close to fifty,
and we have eighteen more years, say,
before the iron doors will open.
We’ll still live with the outside,
with its people and animals, struggle and wind–
I mean with the outside beyond the walls.
I mean, however and wherever we are,
we must live as if we will never die.
III
This earth will grow cold,
a star among stars
and one of the smallest,
a gilded mote on blue velvet–
I mean this, our great earth.
This earth will grow cold one day,
not like a block of ice
or a dead cloud even
but like an empty walnut it will roll along
in pitch-black space . . .
You must grieve for this right now
–you have to feel this sorrow now–
for the world must be loved this much
if you’re going to say “I lived”. . .
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