Stagger Onward Rejoicing

While we may never become a world renown anything, always available to us is something far more valuable: the peace of deep, abiding self-confidence.  Not the ego’s rah-rah (born of fear).  Rather, the confidence that resides in the core of our being, unfazed by anyone’s opinion, especially our own.  

This reflection was stimulated by the December 3, 2018 issue of the New Yorker, what the magazine is calling an archival issue.  In it is a profile of the esteemed poet, W. H. Auden, written by his friend, philosopher Hannah Arendt, and first published in January 1975.  Auden died two years earlier at age 66.

Especially noteworthy is Arendt’s celebration of Auden’s self-confidence, beginning with this story: Geoffrey Grigson, in the Times Literary Supplement, reports the following dialogue between the very young Auden and his tutor at Oxford.  “Tutor: ‘And what are you going to do, Mr. Auden, when you leave the university?’  Auden: ‘I am going to be a poet.’  Tutor: ‘Well––in that case you should find it very useful to have read English.’  Auden: ‘You don’t understand.  I am going to be a great poet.’”

This confidence, Arendt writes, “never left him because it was not acquired by comparisons with others, or by winning a race in competition; it was natural––interconnected, but not identical, with his enormous ability to do with language, and do quickly, whatever he pleased.  (When friends asked him to produce a birthday poem for the next evening at six o’clock, they could be sure of getting it; clearly this is possible only in the absence of self-doubt.)  But even this did not go to his head, for he did not claim, or even aspire to, final perfection.  He constantly revised his own poems, agreeing with Valéry: ‘A poem is never finished; it is only abandoned.’  In other words, he was blessed with that rare self-confidence which does not need admiration and the good opinion of others, and can even withstand self-criticism and self-examination without falling into the trap of self-doubt.  This has nothing to do with arrogance but is easily mistaken for it.”

Such authentic self-confidence emerges as we discover and inhabit that place in our heart that has its fingertips on the divine pulse.  The strength of that connection at any given moment defines our ability in that moment to make choices that lead to unity, harmony, love, compassion.  

While attunement can certainly contribute to sublime excellence in some worldly pursuit, its core reward is far deeper: growing our ability to bring about a life-affirming response to any situation.

Arendt calls Auden “…the least vain of all the authors I have ever met––completely immune to the countless vulnerabilities of ordinary vanity.”  This immunity expands into all areas of our life the more we realize our every action can never be more than a reshaping of what was once our best effort.  There is no finish line.  Joy can be ever new.

I’m pretty sure the universe is perpetually whispering in our ear mantras of encouragement.  Things like “Pay attention,” “More and better,” “Never spit in a man’s face unless his mustache is on fire.”  My favorite reminder, the slogan that most represents the grand adventure of my heart, comes by way of Mr. Auden’s pen: Stagger onward rejoicing.