Tag: Tolstoy

Routine is the Housekeeper of Inspiration

This is the time of year we all try to amend our habits – and rightfully so; habits are our best friends and should be treated accordingly. What we cannot discipline ourselves to do on an ad hoc basis, habit does automatically. I have heard it said that it takes three weeks to entrench a habit or routine, and I think this is probably true. But by the end of three months, something you could not bear to do last year can become something you cannot live without. Believe me.

My morning reading is a good example. I am, generally, an undisciplined reader. I often pick up the easy stuff rather than the hard stuff, what I like rather than what I need. Long ago, I started the habit of having some daily reading to do in the morning after my meditation time, but before the house wakes up. For many years this has consisted of at least three parts:

1) The daily lectionary reading from the Episcopal Book of Common Prayer, which includes (usually) an Old Testament reading, a Psalm, a New Testament reading from the Epistles or Revelations, and a reading from one of the Gospels. I keep track of this through a little quarterly publication (Day by Day) that also gives a very brief commentary for the day. Probably takes about ten minutes total, unless one of the readings grabs or confuses me, wherein I go digging. You do not have to be religious to justify this; Biblical literature is at the basis of much of the literature, history, and culture of the West. And much of it is very beautiful, a good bit of it is brutal, and some of it is very wise.

2) A poem. I have used several sources, but for many years have used the three volumes of A Poem A Day, published by the Steerforth Press, started originally as a hospice project. This year I am back to Volume 3 again. Some of the poems are familiar, some are strange, and none are more than a page. Highly recommended. Other sources I have used include Harold Bloom’s The Best Poems of the English Language and Till I End My Song (poems about old age and death).

3) Another book of daily readings. I just finished the magnificent book of daily readings by Tolstoy, A Calendar of Wisdom. This book, which Tolstoy worked on and used for years, has been recently translated by Peter Sekirin. I guess the original included stories for Sunday – and I wish someone would bring out the full text, but meanwhile this is a treasure. We get Tolstoy’s thoughts, as well as those of everyone else he reads and admires. This year, I am using a volume of daily readings by C.S. Lewis. Other years I have used Sister Wendy (on art), Rilke, you name it – very eclectic choices and I almost never keep the books once the year is over. Tolstoy might be an exception.

4) I usually have a book on the morning table that I dip into if I finish the other reading before my husband gets out of bed and breaks the spell. This year it is Easwaran’s second volume of verse-by-verse commentary on the Bhagavad Gita (Like a Thousand Suns). The Gita is another book that can be gone back to again and again, and Easwaran is at once interesting, comprehensible, and scholarly. Highly recommended.

The elderly field a lot of criticism about how mired they are in their habits. It is true that once I have acquired a habit, I become a little hard to deal with if it is interfered with. This has meant – for example – that I have sometimes had to excuse myself for my mid-afternoon meditation. But, in the long run, this is probably a blessing for everyone involved. And I get my reading done, I go to yoga class, I spend my three hours a week at the gym, and meditate twice a day (all these habits are longstanding, but were painful in their establishment). I started keeping a journal in 2004, and that is a terrific habit – more for its therapeutic value than for the accumulation of pages. In recent years, I have also had to break a number of bad habits – but I have only been able to do that by substituting a more desirable habit for a less desirable one (soda water for Diet Coke, for example). I am not holding myself up as a model, but just pointing out that almost all the positive things I do, I do because they have become habits.

Some habits need reinforcement. I force myself to work on my fiction by belonging to a writing group that expects me to contribute something every couple of weeks. I used to take piano lessons to encourage practice, but now I belong to a group of players who meet and perform for each other monthly, and that serves the same objective in a very pleasant and less expensive way. I have gotten on the scale daily for decades and – while I know it does not work for everyone – the number I see almost magically guides my eating for the day. And so it goes. While there is much to be said for habit, I know it is not a universally held value. Friends comment to my face that I am “very disciplined”; I suspect that behind my back they say I am “very rigid.” But habit only partially ties me down; habit also allows me to get those goals accomplished that mean something to me.

Carlos Ruiz Zafon said it best: “Routine is the housekeeper of inspiration.” For me it is so.
The story for this week is “Again and Again and Again,” about the value of routine and habit to keep ourselves sane, whole, and human.

Three Questions (Or More)

Pablo Picasso once said that “computers are useless, because they can only give you the answers.” It is, of course, the questions that are important. And, I doubt whether computers can answer the really important questions.

Tolstoy was much concerned with questions. Many people do not realize that the great writer gathered and wrote thoughts which he organized for daily reading. I’m told that the original version had weekly stories inserted, but the translation of A Calendar of Wisdom: Daily Thoughts to Nourish the Soul that I have does not include them. However, one of the readings for October 19 was as follows:

Who am I? What should I do? What should I believe in and what should I hope for? All of philosophy is in these questions, said the philosopher Lichtenberg. But among all these questions, the most important one is that which is in the middle. If a person knows what he should do, he will understand everything he should know.

Three questions, one of which is the most important (according to Tolstoy), and no answers. But well worth thinking about.

Of course, this is reminiscent of the three questions Gauguin plastered right on the front of his magnificent painting (in French): Where do we come from? What are we? Where are we going? While Tolstoy seems to be struggling with belief, Gauguin is struggling with existential angst (aren’t we all?).

And, surely our questions come out of our beliefs. Here is Jeannette Winterson:

“To live for art… is to live a life of questioning. If you believe, as I do, that to live for art demands that every other part of life be moved towards one end, then the question, ‘How shall I live?’ is fierce.

Yes. And the questions are related. How shall I live? is much like Tolstoy’s What should I do? and dependent on Gauguin’s Where are we going?

But back to Tolstoy, who also wrote a story called “The Three Questions,” where – at least in the context of the story– there are actually some proposed answers. The story starts like a fairy tale (my italics):

It once occurred to a certain king, that if he always knew the right time to begin everything; if he knew who were the right people to listen to, and whom to avoid; and, above all, if he always knew what was the most important thing to do, he would never fail in anything he might undertake.

When, who, what? The king asks. After visiting a hermit in disguise and having a series of adventures, the king gets these answers from the wise hermit:

Remember then: there is only one time that is important — Now! It is the most important time because it is the only time when we have any power. The most necessary man is he with whom you are, for no man knows whether he will ever have dealings with any one else: and the most important affair is, to do him good, because for that purpose alone was man sent into this life!”

Tolstoy is forever interested in morality and happiness, and, for Tolstoy, moral goodness equals happiness. In my opinion, this is not necessarily an absolute truth. And how certain can we be what “moral goodness” actually consists of? One might be reminded (as I was recently listening to an interview with the novelist Deborah Levy) that the only people who are absolutely certain about things are psychopaths.

What are your questions? When I was young my questions were open-ended and expressions of angst rather than clear frames for inquiry. “Is this all there is?” screams the young protagonist in Ryan’s Daughter. By old age, most of us have vented enough. For me, old age has given me the time to start formulating questions and resisting easy answers. You see many of my questions in this blog and most of my novels and stories are attempts to frame and explore questions. For example, as I approached old age, I wrote a novel about what might happen if the middle generation was wiped out, and only old folks and very young children were left. Surely, one of my more fanciful ideas, but one which gave me an opportunity to think about whether being old was different in very fundamental ways (other than the obvious physical changes).

Please, though, try to formulate your questions. When we are young we are full of questions and we express them freely. Talk to any three-year-old. When we are old, we feel vaguely confused about what the questions are. But they are there and you can express them. Not necessarily answer them, but you would be surprised how much framing the questions helps.

Tolstoy wrote another story to answer a question: “How Much Land Does a Man Need?” It is about a greedy man who dies trying to maximize his holdings. The answer to the title question is in the last lines: “His servant picked up the spade and dug a grave long enough for Pahom to lie in, and buried him in it. Six feet from his head to his heels was all he needed.”

This week’s very short story, “Eye of the Needle,” is about questions we never get a chance to ask, and – perhaps – some answers (or hints to answers) that we didn’t realize we knew.