What A Fool Believes He Sees, No Wise Man Has The Power To Reason Away
I’ve been a fool often in my life. That’s the thing with us fools – we never really know if we’ve stopped being foolish. I suppose that’s the nature of being a fool.
I read a quote recently that bothered me. Some people inspire me with their novel and uncommonly true ideas. Other people inspire me because when I read their ideas, the ideas bother me so much, I feel compelled to create some public declaration to the contrary.
Here is the quote that bothered me:
“You must have been warned against letting the golden hours slip by; but some of them are golden only because we let them slip by.”
. . . ~ James M. Barrie, the author of Peter Pan.
You can read the above quote in context here at: “Courage” on Project Gutenberg, but unfortunately the statement appears to be somewhat of an aside, and the context does not easily define the quote further.
I probably should not let such small things bother me, but they do. I think small ideas can cause huge problems when they are relied upon. I’ve spent a good deal of time combating “small ideas.”
If I’m reading and interpreting the quote correctly (and I understand there are many ways the quote might be read and interpreted), it is suggesting that value is added to some of our past events or relationships primarily because we let them slip by. Or it might be suggesting some relationships, events, or other past “times of life” may become more “golden” because we rose-color them in fleeting hindsight, possibly only remembering the good, tending to forget the bad or difficult parts.
Am I reading and interpreting this quote correctly?
To understand the quote better, it is from the rectoral address delivered at St. Andrews University, May 3rd 1922, an apparent “commencement address” Barrie wrote to “To the Red Gowns of St. Andrews,” titled “Courage” that begins:
“You have had many rectors here in St. Andrews who will continue in bloom long after the lowly ones such as I am are dead and rotten and forgotten. They are the roses in December; you remember someone said that God gave us memory so that we might have roses in December. But I do not envy the great ones. In my experience–and you may find in the end it is yours also–the people I have cared for most and who have seemed most worth caring for–my December roses–have been very simple folk. Yet I wish that for this hour I could swell into someone of importance, so as to do you credit. I suppose you had a melting for me because I was hewn out of one of your own quarries, walked similar academic groves, and have trudged the road on which you will soon set forth. I would that I could put into your hands a staff for that somewhat bloody march, for though there is much about myself that I conceal from other people, to help you I would expose every cranny of my mind. “
So, I ask this:
Was there ever anything in your past that was “only made golden” because you let it slip by?
I’m not asking a rhetorical question. Is there anyone reading this who thinks: That ____ was golden because I let it slip by. ??
Maybe I don’t understand what the quote is saying. Or maybe I understand it, and I disagree.
To vet the idea, I ask: Is there anything in my past I consider “golden” that was made golden by me letting it slip by?
And my answer is honestly: No, I can’t think of one example.
Alternatively, if the quote is intended to be somewhat humorous and cynical. Maybe the quote is suggesting: Some of the things you perceive in your past as “golden” would not have remained “golden” if you’d stayed with them and saw them through. They were only golden because you caught a positive glimpse of them from a doorway and chose not to travel that long road. Had you walked that path, the day to day reality of it would have been anything but golden.
I can understand that interpretation of the quote. That would make sense. That concept is probably true often. But I don’t understand how a wordsmith like Barrie, whose most famous work conceptually centers on the great value of youth and youthful perspectives, may have been so vague and loose with his choice of words to a class of graduates. I don’t know.
Can you think of an example of something from your past that became “golden” in large part because it ended prematurely or because it lasted for such a short time? Does anything become more valuable because it doesn’t come to fruition?
I think of pets I’ve had, whose lives were cut short by accident or becoming lost. While my time with them was golden, it wasn’t made more golden by its early ending.
I think of relationships I’ve had that I may or may not have let slip from me (does any one person ever “let slip” a relationship dependent on the agreed cooperation of two?). While I may perceive some of those relationships as golden, I don’t think they became golden because of their brevity or because they ended unexpectedly early. They were, or are, golden because great chemistry existed while the relationship lasted. They were not, and are not, golden because they slipped by.
For example, just this last week, I had the pleasure of re-connecting with an old friend who I hadn’t spoken with regularly for several years. It was immediately magic again. The laughter and chemistry was all there, as if time away had not occurred. It was golden because the chemistry that existed then was ready and waiting for the next opportunity.
“Golden” – I think the nature of the word speaks to enduring value. Derived from “gold,” gold is the classic example of an asset that has had great value, regardless of religious or cultural trends, since civilization began. To be “golden” is not simply to have temporary, narrow, or subjective value. To be “golden” is to have universal and timeless value.
Personally, I don’t wax pollyanna about past relationships or times in my life because with limited hindsight or a skewed memory they seem golden. I enjoy past memories because I’m confident if I could live through those times again, or if I could relate with those people again, those experiences would still be golden in the complexity of modern real life.
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I love the arts. An old friend used to point out to me the brilliance that existed in plain site in popular artistic expressions. Sure, we all love popular songs because of thir energy or melody. But one of the wonderful things this person showed me was there was often also uncommonly good wisdom in the lyrics of the same songs.
As I considered the quote discussed in this post, this song popped back to mind, form my vast musical memories. I was about 8 years old when this song was #1 on the Billboard chart and it won the Grammys for Song and Record of the year. It seems well-suited for the complexities of this discussion:
He came from somewhere back in her long ago
A sentimental fool don’t see
Tryin’ hard to recreate
What had yet to be created
Once in her life
She musters a smile for his nostalgic tale
Never coming near what he wanted to say
Only to realize
It never really was
She had a place in his life
He never made her think twice
As she rises to her apology
Anybody else would surely know
He’s watching her go
What a fool believes he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away
What seems to be is always better than nothing
And nothing at all keeps sending him somewhere back in her long ago
Where he can still believe there’s a place in her life
Someday, somewhere, she will return
She had a place in his life
He never made her think twice
As she rises to her apology
Anybody else would surely know
He’s watching her go
But what a fool believes he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away
What seems to be, it’s always better than nothing, nothing at all
What A Fool Believes on Wikipedia
By Michael McDonald & Kenny Loggins.
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Later in J.M. Barrie’s “Courage” commencement speech, I like how he finished:
“Be not disheartened by ideals of perfection which can be achieved only by those who run away. Nature, that ‘thrifty goddess,’ never gave you ‘the smallest scruple of her excellence’ for that. Whatever bludgeonings may be gathering for you, I think one feels more poignantly at your age than ever again in life. You have not our December roses to help you; but you have June coming, whose roses do not wonder, as do ours even while they give us their fragrance–wondering most when they give us most–that we should linger on an empty scene. It may indeed be monstrous but possibly courageous. Courage is the thing. All goes if courage goes . . . Fight on–you– for the old red gown till the whistle blows.”
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