Redtree Times

Approaching Eminence– At the West End Gallery

From the very beginning almost I was deeply aware that there is no goal. I never hope to embrace the whole, but merely to give in each separate fragment, each work, the feeling of the whole as I go on, because I am digging deeper and deeper into life, digging deeper and deeper into past and future. With the endless burrowing a certitude develops which is greater than faith or belief. I become more and more indifferent to my fate, as a writer, and more and more certain of my destiny as man.

– Henry Miller, Reflections on Writing

The excerpt above from a Henry Miller essay on writing resonated with me when I read it many years ago. But  it has rings even louder for me today as I go further into my career as an artist.

The idea of not hoping to embrace the whole but showing bits of it in each work speaks to me. And the developing certitude of which he writes, one greater than faith or belief, is something of which I am just beginning to understand.

And his indifference to his fate as a writer reflects my own burgeoning recognition that while I have no control over how my work is perceived either now or in the future, I do have a certain amount of control over my destiny as a human.

I can choose my actions and reactions. I can choose love over hate. Compassion over antipathy. Kindness over cruelty. Generosity over stinginess.

And each of those choices is but a fragment that makes up the whole, similar to that which Miller refers. Each of those choices moves me closer to a certain wholeness as a human.

Do we ever arrive at that wholeness?

Maybe it doesn’t matter. Maybe each step on our journey comprises a wholeness in itself.

As is always the case, I don’t know.

My job here is to just ask questions. Answers, on the other hand, are often hard to come by, something which you usually have to find for yourself.

Let me know if you do.