`Recover'd Greennesse'

Optimism, like an abrupt and fevered conversion to socialism or some other religion, is a reliable symptom of mental illness. In The Rambler #182, Dr. Johnson puts it this way:

“There are multitudes whose life is nothing but a continuous lottery; who are always within a few months of plenty and happiness, and how often soever they are mocked with blanks, expect a prize from the next adventure.”

But hope, as Johnson says elsewhere, “is necessary in every condition.” Even a meager share is sufficient to get us out of bed. Since moving to Washington almost six months ago I’ve worked as a freelance writer, mostly in science and engineering, but haven’t succeeded in finding a fulltime job. I had a good one in Houston and I miss the university library and colleagues who laughed at my nonsense. I’m not desperate but neither am I optimistic, fortunately. The economy stinks and while I’d like to be working with or writing about books, I’d be happy to write about cancer or sustainable energy, so long as it sustains my bank account.

In the last days I’ve read and read again George Herbert’s “The Flower,” marveling at its beauty and grace and remembering there was a time when I would have dismissed it as a fatuous fairy tale. Then I read these lines and see the long arc of my life:

“Who would have thought my shrivel’d heart
Could have recover’d greennesse?”

That is hope incarnate. So is this:

“the flowers in spring;
To which, besides their own demean,
The late-past frosts tributes of pleasure bring.”

And this:

“And now in age I bud again,
After so many deaths I live and write…”

Those two lines hit the hardest. When I spoke to a high school friend not long ago, he told me one of the brightest guys in our class, gifted in both humanities and sciences, had died several years ago. I didn’t know Mitch well. We ran with crowds that intersected only tangentially. He was more poised and better skilled than I was at dealing with adults and the looming adult world. He was a rare contemporary for whom I felt admiration shading into envy.

Oddly, I realize, everyone I most admire, without exception, is dead. I never met any of them and most were gone long before I was born. I’ve met and known scores of good, gifted people, famous and obscure, but none has entered that private pantheon. Strong admiration calls for humility, an acceptance that others accomplish things we prize and will never accomplish ourselves. Otherwise, admiration festers into envy and resentment. All of those I most admire are writers, and chief among them, topping even Henry James, Chekhov and Beckett, is Samuel Johnson, who knew something about money and the writing life. Today, as I follow a couple of job leads, I’ll keep in mind what he wrote in The Rambler #117:

“All industry must be excited by hope.”