I want to eat the whole world. I want the entirety of feeling and experience to fall upon me like rain on the western prairie during a summer thunderstorm, like the frightening fierceness of nature when it reminds us how small we really are. I want to see and hear and be everything. I want life, so vigorously, so fully, so true. In short, I want it all.
The problem is that I cannot have it all. That “it all” is such a nebulous and indefinable term that could mean one hundred different things to one hundred different people. To attempt to define it further, I want a full and rich and textured life. One in which I travel the globe, trying new foods, meeting new people, seeing new things. I also want skills and expertise. I’d like to order well at a restaurant, I’d like to speak fluent French, be able to sail around the world, build a table, climb a mountain, dive a wreck, cook a meal, and make love to a beautiful woman. I suppose this only just scratches the surface of what I mean when I say I want it all, when I say I want to eat the whole world.
Ever since I heard it, it’s been ringing in my ear, the words from Winchester Mansion of Sound on Neko Case’s latest album. So much so that I’ve probably quoted it too often during late night conversations with friends. But, what can one say, when they find an example, a lyric, a poem, a story that speaks so clearly to their soul that they cannot help but shout it out amongst the babbling noise of the world.
There’s too much life, for just one lifetime.
And that is how I feel. There is so much life. There is so much to experience and see, so many people to be, that I cannot seem to fit it all in. It is impossible. And thus, I need multiple lifetimes to achieve the desires of my heart, the yearnings of my soul. Which, I’m not convinced will happen.
It is this desire, this urge, that can become ones prison. For, I cannot achieve my desires and thus, I have failed. And failure is a hard thing to live with. I’m reminded of Eurylochus, Himesh Patel’s character in The Odyssey yelling at Odysseus when confronted with eating the sun god’s cows, “What did you expect?” And that is exactly how I feel, when lucid and thinking clearly. What did I expect? I am only human, I am only frail, I am only prone to wasting time, to drinking to much, to wasting away and not achieving this unreal goal of the polyglot, the genius, the hero, the “great man”, the hero in a novel I once read and internalized in ways I’m only just beginning to realize.
Perhaps this is the fate of the romantic, the dreamer, the one who hopes beyond hope for something more. We end up daydreaming and hoping more then doing and all these dreams become unrealized corpses upon the desolate shores of our lives. Or is this a symptom of something more, and I am not the failure I think I am?
I think this is hopeful thinking. Yes, the world has changed and I am exposed to more than anyone has been in the history of the world. But didn’t literate men from the Middle Ages dream of becoming Ivanhoe or King Arthur? Didn’t the ancient Athenian youth long to be Pericles or the Spartans boys, Brasidas? Didn’t humanity always yearn for something more, for something greater and more refined than themselves? Isn’t that where fiction and story were born? As a human outcrying towards what they wish and yet could never have?
I haven’t read or studied enough to know what the ancients thought of life, if they longed like I longed, if they hoped like I hoped, if they were caught by their weaknesses and failed like I failed. Did they get distracted to? Did they find their limited attention spans and middling intellects subject to the forces of Capitalism? I imagine in some ways they did, for doesn’t the Bible tell us that the love money is the root of all evil. So, did they too, find their time taken up with the pursuit of making enough money so that they could consume and purchase more, so that they could finally afford the life they wanted, and then maybe, just maybe, find happiness? Or is that just me?
Is it a failure that I long to learn French, but I’ve been working at it for eight months and feel no progress. For all I can conjure on a daily basis is the minimal effort to maintain my Duolingo streak. Or that, when I meet with my online weekly tutor I feel nothing but shame for not practicing and putting effort into truly learning the language. Because I had other things going on, I was trying to write, and work, and achieve, and build, and read, and all the other that consumes me. And also, wasting time on whatever superfluous interests that hold me, like football transfers and podcasts and Substack Notes and my attempts at fitness and, and, and…in the words of Okkervil River:
I go home, take off clothes
Smoke a bowl, watch a whole TV movie
I was supposed to be writing
The most beautiful poems
And completely revealing
What I ask, and I ask it to myself, is it failure to try to achieve? Is the act itself enough? Because I enjoy my pursuits, regardless of skill or aplomb, or success — whatever that foolish world might mean. Is it enough that I try and I want and I hope? Is that enough? I certainly hope so, because I have nothing else to show for myself, nothing else to give. I want everything, and I try most things, but I fail because I am human and prone to weariness and shortcuts and daydreaming opposed to doing. I fail because I’m happier reading the book than doing the thing. I like the idea of it, more than I actually like “it”.
But what is this failure I place upon myself? Is it not just a construct of the world and culture I live in? Is it not just a reflection of “hustle culture” and the never-ending pursuit of “achievement” that seems to plague my American mind? Is it not enough that I love to attempt to learn French, whether I can become conversant is beside the point, because I am engaged and trying and hoping and find glee in every new vocabulary addition, in every new understanding of grammar and syntax, in every new collection of words that form a phrase that I can imagine saying, or in every sentence that I can pronounce even remotely close to what the language should and truly sound like.
I use my paltry attempts at French to only highlight my struggles with every pursuit, every aim that takes us my non “productive” hours, my time outside of the matrix, the consumeristic capitalistic machine that more often then not controls how I spend my time. Yet I don’t have an alternative approach or hope, and so I must live within this system, within the water of my fishtanks as Foster Wallace may think of it. And in that fish tank I think it is enough to try and to enjoy and to pursue the fullness of life, the profound wholeness of everything, and to not be “good” at it.
I think success and good and skilled and all these words we use in positive connotation to tell ourselves that we are better than others or have achieve something are false. I think we need to learn to be happy doing and trying and living and experiencing. What else do we have to live for? What other purpose can we have? Not all of us are destined for greatness, no matter how much we long for it. Not all of us will be good at the things we love or want or try, because that is how it seems to work. And I think that is ok.
I am reminded of a dinner I had with a friend not too long ago. He works and he gives to his family but he has nothing left, nothing for himself. We talk about his desire for hobbies for passion. Foolishly or unfoolishly I implored him to pursue those passions and desires, for it doesn’t matter if you are good at them. I am good at none of mine, yet I do them still because they make me happy, they make me fulfilled, and that is something worthy. Doing for the doing of the thing itself is honorable and hopeful and utterly human. What more can we ask of ourselves?
How do I rationalize my perceived failures with my desires? How do I handle wanting everything and yet knowing in that pursuit I will end up with nothing and ultimately must choose something, because I live in a finite world. How can I continue to write and to read and to watch and to live and to think so fully and openly but also with the frailty that is contained within me? How can I rationalize and live with this limitation?
I don’t know the answer to the questions I ask. I’ve just reached the tip of the iceberg, the beginning of understanding that I need. I want the world, yet I can only have a bite. What does that bite look like? Does it have to be good? I don’t even know. All I know is that I love the world, I love it all, and want it all, and hope for it all, and know that it seems all doomed to a hell of it's own making, yet it doesn’t stop me.
I won’t be stopped, life cannot be stopped. It can be paused and distracted, which certainly I fall prey too, but it continues. It pushes forwards, the years grow long and the days short and the hope and opportunity narrows. For one who wants it all what does this look like? It is ok to want and not to have, is it ok to try and to enjoy and experience and not be great? Is just my lifetime, my one and single lifetime enough to live in the way I want?
I hope so.
This resonated a lot -being curious by temperament, in a world that shows you everything is genuinely tiring. “Doing for the doing of the thing itself” is the line I’ll keep. It reminded me of Žižek on drive - satisfaction found in the circling rather than in arriving.