My life has been the poem I would have writ
But I could not both live and utter it.

-Henry David Thoreau

Commentary

“My life is my message.” A similar sentiment has been uttered by many. Mahatma Gandhi almost certainly said something to the same effect.

Recently a church leader spent a day with Ghandi. As he was about to leave he asked Mr. Ghandi for a message to the American people. Mr. Ghandi replied, “Why should I send any message? My life is my message.”

Mahatma Gandhi, quoted in I Join the Church by Karl Quimby

However, Gandhi was not the first to say those words. That same quote is attributed to a number of historical figures – some accurately, and some not.

Lao Tzu expressed something similar when he wrote the Tao te Ching in 600 BC.

Teaching without words,
performing without actions:
that is the Master’s way.

Lao Tzu, The Tao te Ching chapter 43, translated by Stephen Mitchell

When asked if we have a message for a large group of people, most of us would jump at the chance to speak. So, why do the wisest of us persistently turn us towards wordlessness as the true message?

Alan Watts spoke to the heart of the matter.

Now, when I use the word “thinking,” I mean precisely that process: translating what is going on in nature into words, symbols, or numbers. Of course, both words and numbers are kinds of symbols. Symbols bear the same relation to the real world that money bears to wealth. You cannot quench anybody’s thirst with the word “water” just as you cannot eat a dollar bill and derive nutrition from it. But using symbols and using conscious intelligence—scanning—has proved very useful to us. It has given us such technology as we have. But at the same time it has proved too much of a good thing. At the same time, we’ve become so fascinated with it that we confuse the world as it is with the world as it is thought about, talked about, and figured about—that is to say, with the world as it is described. And the difference between these two is vast. And when we are not aware of ourselves except in a symbolic way, we’re not related to ourselves at all. We are like people eating menus instead of dinners.

Alan Watts, “Not What SHould Be, What Is”. Retrieved from Organism.Earth

Thoreau was not one to “eat menus instead of dinners.” In Walden, he wrote,

I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms.

Though a master of symbols, Thoreau was directly engaged with life – at least in his better moments. And “My life has been the poem I would have writ” was written in one of his best. If he had tired to “utter” the poem of his life, it would exist in the world of abstract concepts. And he would not have been able to live it

A Practice

Take time to reflect on the poem that your life has been so far. What is the feeling texture of the poem? Its shape, its emotional timbre? How does it affect you? Whatever the feeling, is it an authentic expression of your soul?

Now, take some time to reflect on the following. What would you do to shape the poem of the rest of your life? Would you live with more courage? More love? Would you abandon your job and wander the mountains, relearning the language of birds and stones? Would you abandon your fantasies and be more present with your family, experiencing fully every grasping hand and tear and new discovery? Would you continue doing the work you are doing, but add in more of your unique creative gifts?

Imagine, on the day you die, uttering some version of Thoreau’s phrase. Imagine your life being a perfect expression of the deepest message your heart would bring to the world. Sink into the golden radiance of knowing you have lived your message. That no more words are needed.