Life is or can be so beautiful, it is just that we humans seem to have a propensity to undermine or destroy or not even see this beauty, especially manifest as this beauty is in Nature, and in and through a mutual personal love between two human beings.
But why – just why – do we human beings have a propensity to so undermine or destroy or not even see the beauty of Life, of Nature, of love? Because of our desires, our selfish desires, and because of the abstractions – the lifeless, un-numinous, abstractions we human beings have, in our hubris, manufactured; which lifeless abstractions we pursue, or we place before such beauty, such a numinous apprehension and appreciation of Nature, as Nature is – a natural unfolding (φύσις) and a very slow natural change – without our interference and our arrogant desire to change things quickly according to some abstraction such as “progress” or according to some “plan” or some “destiny” or scheme we in our arrogance, insolence, and haste have devised or believe in.
However, I am as responsible as anyone for having committed the error of hubris – having pursued, for most of my adult life, some abstraction or other, and thus placed some manufactured goal, or some idealized perceived duty, before the beauty of love, and before that letting-be which allows us to appreciate, to feel, the numinosity of Nature.
As Sophocles wrote, several thousand years ago:
ὕβρις φυτεύει τύραννον:
ὕβρις, εἰ πολλῶν ὑπερπλησθῇ μάταν,
ἃ μὴ ‘πίκαιρα μηδὲ συμφέροντα,
ἀκρότατον εἰσαναβᾶσ᾽
αἶπος ἀπότομον ὤρουσεν εἰς ἀνάγκαν
ἔνθ᾽ οὐ ποδὶ χρησίμῳ
χρῆται.
Insolence [hubris] plants the tyrant:
There is insolence if by a great foolishness
There is a useless over-filling which goes beyond
The proper limits -
It is an ascending to the steepest and utmost heights
And then that hurtling toward that Destiny
Where the useful foot has no use.
In retrospect, life, for me, has been in so many respects enjoyable and replete with joy – a joy sufficient and often innocent enough to keep me mostly balanced through many times of personal tragedy and loss, and also in situations when I myself suffered the consequences of some dishonourable act or acts by some human beings who seemed to have lost or not to even have possessed the human qualities of empathy and honour.
Now, as I recall and review over five decades of conscious living, I am also aware of just how selfish I have been, and in particular aware of how I, through focussing on abstractions, ideals and supra-personal goals, have personally hurt people who loved me, and personally caused or been the cause of suffering in this world. But I like to believe that I have, finally, learnt and understood some important things – especially about myself – as a result of my diverse rather adventurous and sometimes strange life.
Thus it is that I find, through and because of such a recalling, that what I value now, what I feel and sense is most important, is a direct, personal, mutual love between two human beings – and that such love is far far more important, more real, more human, than any abstraction, than any idealism, than any so-called duty, than any dogma, than any cause, however “idealistic”; more important – far more important – than any ideology, than any and all -isms and -ologies be such -isms and such -ologies understood conventionally as political, or religious or social. For it is the desire to love, to be loved – and the desire to cease to cause suffering – which are important, which should be our priority, and which are the true measure of our own humanity.
What, therefore, shall I personally miss the most as my own mortal life now moves toward its fated ending? It is the rural England that I love, where I feel most at home, where I know I belong, and where I have lived and worked for many many years of my adult life – the rural England of small villages, hamlets, and farms, far from cities and main roads, that still (but only just) exists today in parts of Shropshire, Herefordshire, Yorkshire, Somerset and elsewhere. The rural England of small fields, hedgerows, trees of Oak, where – over centuries – a certain natural balance has been achieved such that Nature still lives and thrives there where human beings can still feel, know, the natural rhythm of life through the seasons, and where they are connected to the land, the landscape, because they have dwelt, lived, worked there year after year, season after season, and thus know in a personal, direct, way every field, every hedge, every tree, every pond, every stream, around them within a day of walking.
This is the rural England where change is slow, and often or mostly undesired and where a certain old, more traditional, attitude to life and living still exists, and which attitude is one of preferring the direct slow experience of what is around, what is natural, what is of Nature, to the artificial modern world of cities and towns and fast transportation and vapid so-called “entertainment” of others.
That is what I shall miss the most, what I love and have treasured – beyond women loved, progeny sown, true friends known:
The joy of slowly walking in fields tended with care through the hard work of hands; the joy of hearing again the first Cuckoo of Spring; of seeing the Swallows return to nest, there where they have nested for so many years. The joy of sitting in some idle moment in warm Sun of an late English Spring or Summer to watch the life on, around, within, a pond, hearing thus the songful, calling birds in hedge, bush, tree, the sounds of flies and bees as they dart and fly around.
The joy of walking through meadow fields in late Spring when wild flowers in their profusion mingle with the variety of grasses that time over many decades have sown, changed, grown. The joy of hearing the Skylark rising and singing again as the cold often bleak darkness of Winter has given way at last to Spring.
The simple delight of – having toiled hours on foot through deep snow and a colding wind – of sitting before a warm fire of wood in that place called home where one’s love has waited to greet one with a kiss.
The joy of seeing the first wild Primrose emerge in early Spring, and waiting, watching, for the Hawthorn buds to burst and bloom. The soft smell of scented blossoms from that old Cherry tree. The sound of hearing the bells of the local village Church, calling the believers to their Sunday duty. The simple pleasure of sitting after a week of work with a loved one in the warm Summer quietness of the garden of an English Inn, feeling rather sleepy having just imbued a pint or two of ale as liquid lunch.
The smell of fresh rain on newly ploughed earth, bringing life to seeds, crops, newly sown. The mist of an early Autumn morning rising slowly over field and hedge while Sun begins to warm the still chilly air. The very feel of the fine tilth one has made by rotaring the ground ready for planting in the Spring, knowing that soon will come the warmth of Sun, the life of rain, to give profuse living to what shall be grown – and knowing, feeling, that such growth, such fecundity, is but a gift, to be treasured not profaned…
These are the joys, some of the very simple, the very English, things I treasure; that I have loved the most, and whose memories I shall seek to keep flowing within me as my own life slowly ebbs away…
For it is to the now almost lost England of such things that I belong, that I have always belonged, even though for many years I, in my profane often selfish stupidity, forget this, subsumed as I was in my hubris with un-numinous abstractions.
The Sun of Warm November
So this is Peace:
As the Sun of warm November
Warms and the grass grows with such mildness.No strife, here;
No place beyond this place
As Farm meets meadow field
And I upon some hessian sack sit, write
To hear some distant calls from hedged-in sheep:
No breeze
To stir the fallen leaves
That lie among the seeds, there
Where the old Oak towers, shading fence
From Sun
And the pond is hazed with midges.So this is the peace, found
Where dew persists,
Flies feed to preen to rest
And two Robins call from among that tangled brambled
Bush
Whose berries – unplucked, ripened – rot,
While the Fox-worn trail wobbles
Snaking
Through three fields.So, the silent Buzzard soars
To shade me briefly:
No haste, worry, nor Homo Hubris, here
Only that, of this, a peaceful peace
Rising
When we who wait, wait to walk with Nature.So there is much sadness, leaving
As the damp field-mists of morning
Have given way
To Sun
David Myatt
2010 CE
Addendum – A Note Concerning Physis
The phrase Φύσις κρύπτεσθαι φιλεῖ – attributed to Heraclitus – expresses something of the true nature of Physis. See, for example, my brief essay Physis, Nature, Concealment, where I suggest that the phrase implies something akin to Concealment accompanies Physis, or Concealment remains with Physis, like a friend (or, The natural companion of Physis is concealment.)
We, as thinking human beings – who can use λόγος – can not only uncover Φύσις but also conceal it again by our use of ideation, and by our “naming” of things. Why is why Heraclitus also said:
τοῦ δὲ λόγου τοῦδ᾽ ἐόντος ἀεὶ ἀξύνετοι γίνονται ἄνθρωποι καὶ πρόσθεν ἢ ἀκοῦσαι καὶ ἀκούσαντες τὸ πρῶτον
Although this naming and expression, which I explain, exists – human beings tend to ignore it, both before and after they have become aware of it. (Fragment 1)
An understanding also expressed by Hesiod (Theog, 27-28):
ἴδμεν ψεύδεα πολλὰ λέγειν ἐτύμοισιν ὁμοῖα,
ἴδμεν δ᾽, εὖτ᾽ ἐθέλωμεν, ἀληθέα γηρύσασθαι
We have many ways to conceal – to name – certain things
And the skill when we wish to expose their meaning
