In his collection of nonfiction, Just Before Dark, Jim Harrison notes that he “awoke in the middle of the night and wrote down that it is important not to accept life as a brutal approximation.” He went on to use that phrase in the opening sentence of his splendid novel Dalva.
That is an evocative statement, and I want to explore what it might mean. In doing so, it would be easy to throw out the sort of simplistic statements about happiness and fulfillment that appear on posters in college resident halls, in self-improvement books, and in Unitarian orders of service. While often clever, they are irrelevant bromides that ignore the reality of life, whether the reality is a gritty struggle related to money or health, or the vaguer challenge of facing the suffocating routine of daily living. That gets at another point: it is easy to consider the question of how to live from, say, a middle or upper class American perspective, while assuming that such questions are not even considered by the poor or uneducated. Yet, the need for meaning seems generally unrelated to income. Avoiding life as a “brutal approximation” is a challenge that cuts across class lines.
Thoreau got at the notion of life as a brutal approximation when he wrote in Walden, “The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation.” Although Thoreau’s words ring true, I doubt that he is a worthy guide through this territory. He wrote Walden before he was thirty, when he was still in full solipsistic bloom. “Resignation” is the wrong term because in living their lives few people feel resigned to their fate. Rather they accept it. Although the important words in Harrison’s phrase seem to be “brutal approximation,” “accept” is key to the meaning. Accepting life as an approximation, brutal or not, connotes drifting semi-consciously on the current of expectation and routine until some crisis or other significant event causes one to take action. Days, months, and years float past and disappear into hazy memory.
Certainly we cannot stop the stream of time, yet we can engage with it by seeing each day as singular and special, to be noticed, appreciated, and lived—and not merely “accepted.” Of course, life is not something theoretical but a continuum of real events, some obviously good, some obviously bad, and many that are not either. Nevertheless, each day is singular, and to be aware of that is to live fully. Tennessee Williams said it well: “[O]nce you fully apprehend the vacuity of a life without struggle you are equipped with the basic means of salvation.” And of avoiding accepting life as a brutal approximation.