Expect the expected

Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch (1863 - 1944)

A terrible shadow drew nearer -  a shadow 

that seemed as if torn from universal Night.   

                   —Dame Edith Sitwell, 

                    The Queens and the Hive (1962)

They say “expect the unexpected” but common sense tells us to “expect the expected”; there is some hope in the unexpected, it remains unknown, but we have a good idea of what the expected might be. Isn't it just common sense to expect the expected?

The other night, reading the Oxford Book of English Verse (1939), edited by Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch,  I thought this is about as good as it gets for a poet. If you can have just one page in a future edition of the Oxford Book of English Verse you've got it made, you have been and will be  remembered, you have dodged obscurity, your work will be remembered. The irony of this is that the editor of this famous anthology, Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch, has been more or less forgotten; indeed, Quiller-Couch's website intends to salvage him from obscurity. The truth is, for all of us, that with time there will be no one still alive who will remember us, or remember what (if anything) we accomplished, and it will be as though we never existed. Expect the expected.

Oh, how we struggle against time. Time cracks the whip and we jump and ask, “is that high enough, I can jump higher?” Old age is torture, it includes declining health, physical and mental exhaustion, arthritic pain, dentures and dementia, loneliness and regret, and the loss of all of one’s friends and family, we are stripped naked and chastised; the worst is saved for last when we are weak, crippled, and incontinent, and least able to deal with it. 

D.H. Lawrence wrote about the "bitch goddess" success, about the desire for material riches and fame that drives most people; they want the magic dust of being wealthy and famous sprinkled on them but without doing anything to deserve it, they want to be a somebody, even if being a somebody doesn't last long. But this magic dust bestowing fame and success is still dust, to be sprinkled down by the gods, or perhaps from Mount Parnassus. Poets should remember that the Muses don't care about your fame, prizes, literary awards, honorary degrees, prestigious presses, or who you knew, they are preoccupied with transience, that nothing lasts forever, and if it is the desire for fame driving your poetry, hanging out in bars at 2 a.m., schmoozing and boozing, it will still come to nothing but dust. And this applies to everybody; Transience, thy name is Everyman's Fate; Shelley knew this, it is the message of "Ozymandias", his most famous poem. I say to you poets, you are dead while still alive; blow the dust off the paper on which you have written your poem, the poem is already dust, the paper is dust, and then the poet is dust.

The overweening desire for fame

 

What has gone wrong with Western society? Are we in decline or are we just changing? Have we become a society with few moral values or are different moral values evolving?  Are we happier, more fulfilled, better people who think of the other person and not just ourselves?  Are we happy, or are we just full of ourselves; or do we have no introspection, no self-doubt, and no self-awareness?       

Let’s look at Americans. During the last thirty years Americans have become ultra extroverts, every child is told they can become anything they want, they can do anything they want; everything they do is praised; subsequently, there are very few shy and introspective children left. You see people on television, on the game show The Price is Right; when audience members are called to come forward and be contestants they dance, pull faces, do cart wheels, high five a dozen strangers, scream, yell, and even the old have become cards and cut ups despite arthritic limbs and palsy, even the old behave in a way no one would have behaved just a few years ago. Fame and extroversion seem to go together. Look at celebrities, fame and self-promotion are what they crave but these are no replacement for whatever once sustained us as a society; we have abandoned what is traditional at great cost to society and to our very souls. And since traditional values have been abandoned the young have nothing real to believe in but the desire to be famous, nothing sustains them, they have been psychologically impoverished by cancelling both their traditions and culture, no wonder social media are so important to them, we're all famous on social media. 

Today, even small children want to be famous but, like everybody else, not for any real accomplishment but for fame itself; it is fame for just existing, without introspection or thought or education or talent or hard work or love of what you are doing or for caring for other people. The modest person will come in last around here! And since we are all special without doing something that makes us special, then why bother accomplishing anything? Just being ourselves makes us special, we are "special for nothing", like body builders who have big muscles not for doing work but solely for appearance. 

No one is special in themselves and fame is for doing something that is a real accomplishment, for commitment and passion, for something that will possibly make you famous --your self-worth is not contingent on becoming famous-- fame is not just for who you already are, it is for doing something that other people have not done before or few have achieved. Fame diverts you from your calling in life, it diminishes your calling, it prevents you from discovering your calling. And no, you cannot be whatever you want to be even though your grade school teachers told you so. What someone accomplishes is done for its own sake, it is your calling in life, it is never to be famous; fame is a by-product of excelling at what you love to do and, even then, fame has limited if any importance. A hundred years ago DH Lawrence wrote of the “bitch goddess success”, we now have our own god, it is fame.