Courtesy Random House
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Excerpt From Roger Housden's
Seven Sins for a Life Worth Living
May & June 2007
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"At twenty, we worry about what others think of us; at forty, we don't care what they think of us; at sixty, we discover they haven't been thinking of us at all."—Bob Hope, quoted in London's Daily Mail
So the pleasure of not fully knowing where you are going or why doesn't mean you merely drift through life like a leaf in the wind. The fact that we can never see the whole picture doesn't mean we don't bother to form any personal intention—it acknowledges that our intention is best served by an open, attentive mind, one that is receptive and cooperative with the larger forces of life around it, whatever they may be. Then life can be what it is, a mystery, and not just an agenda; a mystery that is constantly revealing itself, and of which we are a part, instead of an agenda we have to laboriously work through. Life as revelation is a pleasure indeed.
One of the times I had a taste of what it was like to lose my agenda was when I couldn't find the exit to the maze at Hampton Court, the palace outside London where King Henry VIII spent much of his time. It's not an especially large maze, though large enough to get lost in, I discovered, with its high hedges and clever blind alleys. I went in thinking it would be a few minutes of pleasant diversion, but after ten minutes of going in circles realized it was rather more complicated. I came to a standstill somewhere in the middle—at least, that is where I thought I was—and realized that the aim I had come in with, which was to walk through and out, had evaporated. In its place was simply the sensation of myself going nowhere. For a moment I was returned to a simple, primal innocence. There are few experiences more pleasurable than that.
Perhaps, if the maze had been larger and there was no one to call out to, I would have felt trapped and afraid. But no; I felt nonplussed, a pleasant sensation of free fall, suspended somehow from the life I normally identified as mine. And I understood in that moment the deeper purpose of mazes. Yes, it was fun for the aristocracy to play at being lost in their formal back gardens, but their true purpose, it dawned on me, is to a-maze us. It even gave us the word. Amazing. The exit, I discovered when I started walking again, was less than a minute from where I had been standing.
From the book Seven Sins for a Life Worth Living by Roger Housden. © 2005 by Roger Housden. Published by Harmony Books, a division of Random House, Inc.
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