Section 3 : Part 10

Wisdom and Destiny
by Maurice Maeterlinck

(Page 13 of 14)

This craving for the extraordinary is often the special weakness of ordinary men, who fail to perceive that the more normal, and ordinary, and uniform events may appear to us, the more are we able to appreciate the profound happiness that this uniformity enfolds, and the nearer are we drawn to the truth and tranquillity of the great force by which we have being. What can be less abnormal than the ocean, which covers two-thirds of the globe; and yet, what is there more vast? There is not a thought or a feeling, not an act of beauty or nobility, whereof man is capable, but can find complete expression in the simplest, most ordinary life; and all that cannot be expressed therein must of necessity belong to the falsehoods of vanity, ignorance, or sloth.

89. Does this mean that the wise man should expect no more from life than other men; that he should love mediocrity and limit his desires; content himself with little and restrict the horizon of his happiness, because of the fear lest happiness escape him? By no means; for the wisdom is halting and sickly that can too freely renounce a legitimate human hope. Many desires in man may be legitimate still, notwithstanding the disapproval of reason, sometimes unduly severe. But the fact that our happiness does not seem extraordinary to those about us by no means warrants our thinking that we are not happy. The wiser we are, the more readily do we perceive that happiness lies in our grasp; that it has no more enviable gift than the uneventful moments it brings. The sage has learnt to quicken and love the silent substance of life. In this silent substance only can faithful joys be found, for abnormal happiness never ventures to go with us to the tomb.

The day that comes and goes without special whisper of hope or happiness should be as dear to us, and as welcome, as any one of its brothers. On its way to us it has traversed the same worlds and the self-same space as the day that finds us on a throne or enthralled by a mighty love. The hours are less dazzling, perhaps, that its mantle conceals; but at least we may rely more fully on their humble devotion. There are as many eternal minutes in the week that goes by in silence, as in the one that tomes boldly towards us with mighty shout and clamour. And indeed it is we who tell ourselves all that the hour would seem to say; for the hour that abides with us is ever a timid and nervous guest, that will smile if its host be smiling, or weep if his eyes be wet. It has been charged with no mission to bring happiness to us; it is we who should comfort the hour that has sought refuge within our soul. And he is wise who always finds words of peace that he can whisper low to his guest on the threshold.

We should let no opportunity for happiness escape us, and the simplest causes of happiness should be ever stored in our soul. It is well, at first, to know happiness as men conceive it, so that, later, we may have good reason for preferring the happiness of our choice. For, herein, it is not unlike what we are told of love. To know what real love should be we must have loved profoundly, and that first love must have fled. It is well to know moments of material happiness, since they teach us where to look for loftier joys; and all that we gain, perhaps, from listening to the hours that babble aloud in their wantonness is that we are slowly learning the language of the hours whose voice is hushed. And of these there are many; they come in battalions, so close on the heels of each other that treachery and flight cannot be; wherefore it is on them alone that the sage should depend. For he will be happy whose eyes have learned to detect the hidden smile and mysterious jewels of the myriad, nameless hours; and where are these jewels to be found, if not in ourselves?

90. But there is a kind of ignoble discretion that has least in common, of all things, with the wisdom we speak of here; for we had far better spend our energy round even fruitless happiness, than slumber by the fireside awaiting joys that never may come. Only the joys that have been offered to all, and none have accepted, will knock at his door who refuses himself to stir forth. Nor is the other man wise who holds the reins too tight on his feelings, and halts them when reason commands, or experience whispers. The friend is not wise who will not confide in his friend, remembering always that friendships may come to an end; nor the lover, who draws back for fear lest he may find shipwreck in love. For here, were we twenty times unfortunate, it is still only the perishable portion of our energy for happiness that suffers; and what is wisdom after all but this same energy for happiness cleansed of all that is impure?

To be wise we must first learn to be happy, that we may attach ever smaller importance to what happiness may be in itself. We should be as happy as possible, and our happiness should last as long as is possible; for those who can finally issue forth from self by the portal of happiness, know infinitely wider freedom than those who pass through the gate of sadness. The joy of the sage illumines his heart and his soul alike, whereas sadness most often throws light on the heart alone. One might almost compare the man who had never been happy with a traveller whose every journey had been taken by night. Moreover, there is in happiness a humility deeper and nobler, purer and wider, than sorrow can ever procure. There is a certain humility that ranks with parasitic virtues, such as sterile self-sacrifice, arbitrary chastity, blind submission, fanatic renouncement, penitence, false shame, and many others, which have from time immemorial turned aside from their course the waters of human morality, and forced them into a stagnant pool, around which our memory still lingers.

Nor do I speak of a cunning humility that is often mere calculation, or, taken at its best, a timidity that has its root in pride - a loan at usury that our vanity of to-day extends to our vanity of to-morrow. And even the sage at times conceives it well to lower himself in his own self-esteem, and to deny superior merits that are his when comparing himself with other men. Humility of this kind may throw a charm around our ways of life, but yet, sincere as it doubtless may be, it nevertheless attacks the loyalty due to ourselves, which we should value high above all.

And it surely implies a certain timidity of conscience; whereas the conscience of the sage should harbour neither timidity nor shame. But by the side of this too personal humility there exists another humility that extends to all things, that is lofty and strong, that has fed on all that is best in our brain and our heart and our soul. It is a humility that defines the limit of the hopes and adventures of men; that lessens us only to add to the grandeur of all we behold; that teaches us where we should look for the true importance of man, which lies not in that which he is, but in that which his eyes can take in, which he strives to accept and to grasp. It is true that sorrow will also bring us to the realm of this humility; but it hastens us through, branching off on the road to a mysterious gate of hope, on whose threshold we lose many days; whereas happiness, that after the first few hours has nothing else left to do, will lead us in silence through path after path till we reach the most unforeseen, inaccessible places of all.

About the Author

Count Maurice Polydore Marie Bernard Maeterlinck (August 29, 1862 - May 6, 1949) was a Belgian poet, playwright, and essayist. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1911. The main themes in his work are death and the meaning of life.