#02 The Courage to Live
"I have decided to starve."
Life’s greatest tragedy is not being fully lived. We’ve evolved to great advances in social, health, and economic well-being, but it feels like we’ve lost something along the way. We’ve traded flavor and nutrition for safe and cheap; creativity and expression for guarantees and steadiness. From pasteurized cheese to job descriptions, life has never been easier, faster, or more tasteless.
A Factory Worker (Modern Times, by Charles Chaplin, 1936). The only difference is that you’re sitting and using a keyboard.
Nothing wrong with a steady, safe job, one that puts food on the table and pays the mortgage, you tell yourself. You can always find some expression of who you are in your hobbies and side gigs. And if you’re lucky enough, you might just get picked by the right person, at the right time, that sees your talent, and will propel you to stardom and give you everything you need to live from what you really, really want to do. And then you’ll be happy ever after.
That, of course, is a fairy tale. Not that there is no Prince Charming, but if you’re waiting to get picked, not only you’ll be disappointed when he goes to the other house, you’ll have no agency on your life. And that is at the heart of the lack of humanity we’re living.
You see, the siren’s song of “safe” is too strong. “Comfortable” is what kills you - not physically, but (way worse) it kills your soul. You were made to evolve, to become who you are, and that’s not the definition of comfortable.
“I have decided to starve”
Charles Bukowski had always wanted to be a writer. After finishing high school in 1939, he studied art, journalism, and literature, before moving to New York in 1941 to pursue his calling. He got a job as a blue-collar worker to support himself while trying to “make it” into the literary world, but after five years with no success, he gave up writing as a career and did it for himself, only very sporadically for less known publications (one had exactly two editions printed.)
After a near-fatal ulcer, in 1955, he decided to take writing seriously again, and during this time he worked again as a blue-collar while publishing much more often, always with small presses, and focusing on poetry. This went on for more than a decade. Until John Martin, the editor of one of the larger presses, made him an offer of publishing him in exchange for royalties - no guarantees. He was 49 years old.
"I have one of two choices –,” he wrote, “stay in the post office and go crazy ... or stay out here and play at writer and starve. I have decided to starve." He accepted the offer and quit his job the next day. He became one of the greatest modern poets.
He didn’t wait to be picked - he chose to keep relentlessly writing, for years, not for some reward, but because that’s who he was. Even when chance presented itself, there were no guarantees, no safety net, no comfortable promises. There was only the courage to live a life true to who he was.
Bukowski’s life is considered to be a disaster by most people, and most people would also classify his poetry as vulgar (or not poetry at all.) He was okay with this, his art was not for everyone. But it still appeals to those with the courage to live, to be willing to starve if that brings them closer to becoming who they are.
#WIIMF
My wife and I “decided to starve” in 2019, when we left very good jobs in Brazil to move to New Zealand with two babies, no income, and no promises. It had always been our dream to move, but with life circumsances like those, and with the kids growing and being close to their grandfathers and family, most would consider foolish, crazy, or irresponsible to abandon everything to do it without a safe path.
As Bukowski would say, we had to choices - stay in Brazil and go numb, or move and risk starving. We chose to starve.
We wanted our kids to grow knowing that their parents lived without regrets, in which family is not an anchor to be secretly despised, but a ship that sets us free and feels like home wherever we are. And that’s how we feel - not always easy or comfortable to be a foreigner away from family and friends, but absolutely proud, content, and free.
No Leaders Please
Charles Bukowski
invent yourself and then reinvent yourself, don’t swim in the same slough. invent yourself and then reinvent yourself and stay out of the clutches of mediocrity.
invent yourself and then reinvent yourself, change your tone and shape so often that they can never categorize you.
reinvigorate yourself and accept what is but only on the terms that you have invented and reinvented.
be self-taught.
and reinvent your life because you must; it is your life and its history and the present belong only to you.