18: If Only...

18 

If Only… 

          The saddest words in the world are: if only…

I came upon this phrase by accident this morning while waiting for the water for my tea to boil. Actually, I don’t really believe in accidents. I was led to the saddest words in the world by the merciful law of synchronicity to enlighten me on the human condition, and whenever this happens I know I’ve been called upon to write a spiritual musing. So, if I may, let me share with you how synchronicity also provided a viable solution to the saddest words in the world… 

A few days ago I brought to closure The Pearl of Great Price, and my mind was restless as it always is whenever I finish writing a new book; and to keep the PCBs (post-creative blues) at bay, I went down to the basement to browse through my books in the hope of finding one that would help to fill that empty feeling left by writing a new book.

The book I was looking for in particular was Joseph Campbell’s The Hero with a Thousand Faces that chronicles man’s quest for his lost soul in all the mythologies of the world, which I wanted to read again because I had referenced it in The Pearl of Great Price; and I browsed through my bookshelf but couldn’t find it. It had to be in my unpacked boxes, and I looked until I found it. But I kept browsing through my books because many of the old tittles brought back that feeling of excitement that I had when I first bought those books.

I loved the excitement of all those old titles, some of which I hadn’t read yet because something or other supplanted my interest; and I decided to just let my instincts choose some other books besides Campbell’s to help stave off the PCBs, and I ended up choosing a biography of John Cheever, one of America’s best short story writers whose closeted life fascinated me because it was sure to give me insights into his stories; a short book of stories by Allan Sillitoe called The Loneliness of a Long Distance Runner (I used to be a long distance runner and I suddenly felt nostalgic); as well as three books on vocabulary —Word Power Made Easy, by Norman Lewis; Reader’s Digest Super Word Power; and Instant Vocabulary, by Ida Ehrlich because I felt a strong literary need to expand my vocabulary.

“Words form the core of thought, and so the limitations of your vocabulary will mark the limitations of your thought,” wrote Peter Funk in his introduction to Super Word Power; and I desperately needed some new words to give expression to all those little bursts of new consciousness that I had realized while writing The Pearl of Great Price, and I also felt that learning new words would help to fill that empty feeling the PCBs had given me.

Incidentally, just by way of a literary aside graced upon me by synchronicity, I listened to Paul Kennedy’s Ideas on CBC radio the night before, who ended his show on farming oysters in British Columbia by quoting from Hemingway’s melancholy memoir A Moveable Feast, which just happened to be my favorite book on the craft of creative writing: when Hemingway was writing in a warm and clean and friendly little café on the Place St. Michel in Paris during his apprenticeship days honing his craft of short story writing, he always felt empty after completing a new story, and he’d order a dozen “portugaises” oysters and a half carafe of dry white wine to fill that empty feeling:—

 

“After writing a story I was always empty and both sad and happy, as though I had made love…As I ate the oysters with their strong taste of the sea and their faint metallic taste that the cold white wine washed away leaving only the sea taste and the succulent texture, and as I drank their cold liquid from their shell and washed it down with the crisp taste of the wine, I lost the empty feeling and began to be happy and to make plans.”

 

Books were my oysters, and I went upstairs to replenish my empty feeling with that revitalizing energy that books that excited my curiosity always give me; and I started with John Cheever’s biography instead of The Hero with a Thousand Faces just to see how long it would take to confirm my suspicions about Cheever’s life, which wasn’t long at all because on the first page of Scott Donaldson’s forward I learned what I needed to know about the celebrated short story writer: “I came to see Cheever’s as a bifurcated life. John Cheever was a man divided against himself. Out of that separation came most of his best writing, which is to say some of the best writing done by an American in this century.”

Ernest Hemingway was a bifurcated man also, and his best writing came from the split in his personality which I explored in my literary memoir The Lion that Swallowed Hemingway; and despite all the talent in the world, I had come to see that writers would never resolve the central issue of the human condition that characterizes all great literature, like Goethe’s Faust and Robert Louis Stevenson’s The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, which was why I was called to write The Pearl of Great Price and put this issue to rest.

So as I waited for the water to boil I read from Super Word Power, where I came across the saddest words in the world for which the merciful law of synchronicity would provide a surprising solution. Arthur Gordon, who wrote this story for Reader’s Digest, tells the reader how he came upon what his friend the “Old Man” (a psychiatrist almost eighty still active in his profession) called “the two saddest words in any language” and how he got Gordon out of the funk he was in because an important project he was working on had fallen through.

Gordon had miscalculated badly and was feeling sorry for himself; but after the Old Man listened to his tale of woe he invited him to his office across the street from the little French restaurant where they were sitting, and he took out a tape for Gordon to listen to. “On this tape are three short recordings made by three persons who came to me for help,” he said. “I want you to listen to the recordings and see if you can pick out the two-word phrase that is the common denominator in all three cases.”

The Old Man had his reasons for Gordon to listen to those three tales of woe, because they all used the phrase “if only” just as Gordon had done three times while recounting his own sad tale to his friend. “You’d be amazed if you knew how many thousands of times I’ve sat in this chair and listened to woeful sentences beginning with those two words ‘If only,’ said the Old Man, and he went on to make his point to pull Gordon out of his funk— “If only I had done it differently—or not done it all. If only I hadn’t lost my temper, said that cruel thing, made that dishonest move, told that foolish lie. If only I had been wiser, or more unselfish, or more self-controlled…”

Gordon got the point and shook his head ruefully. “Well, what’s the remedy?”

“Shift the focus. Strike out the words if only; substitute the phrase next time,” said the Old Man, which was his way of offering Gordon a way to “push aside the roadblock of regret, move forward, take action, and resume living.”

“Several years have passed since that rainy afternoon in Manhattan,” Gordon concludes his article. “But to this day, whenever I find myself thinking ‘if only,’ I change it to ‘next time.’ That’s how he pulled himself out of the inevitable funk of if only and got on with his life.

I had to get back to work editing The Pearl of Great Price, but I needed a bookmark to mark off my Reader’s Digest book where Gordon ends his article. I usually have two or three on my desk, but all my bookmark were taken up by the pile of books beside my chair that I had not finished reading yet; so I decided to take an oracle card from the little bundle tied with an elastic band on my shelf beside my desk and use that for a bookmark.

I pulled out an oracle card at random, little expecting that it would address Gordon’s amazing little story, but synchronicity speaks from a place so far beyond the level of my awareness that I have to call it divine, and it blessed me with the solution to the funk of “if only” by firming up “next time” with that miraculous power that has spared many souls from sinking into despair. My oracle card said: KEEPING THE FAITH, shouting loud and clear that we have to believe in ourselves the next time we endeavor; and with a big smile on my face I put aside my editing and decided to write this spiritual musing instead.