This morning I read a quote by novelist Henry James that made me smile. He offers this advice to writers: “Try to be one of the people on whom nothing is lost!” I found the original quote from his book, The Art of Fiction, written in 1884. James writes this:
The power to guess the unseen from the seen, to trace the implication of things, to judge the whole piece by the pattern, the condition of feeling life, in general, so completely that you are well on your way to knowing any particular corner of it — this cluster of gifts may almost be said to constitute experience, and they occur in country and in town, and in the most differing stages of education. If experience consists of impressions, it may be said that impressions are experience, just as (have we not seen it?) they are the very air we breathe. Therefore, if I should certainly say to a novice, “Write from experience, and experience only,” I should feel that this was a rather tantalizing monition if I were not careful immediately to add, “Try to be one of the people on whom nothing is lost!”
I love this encouragement to notice everything, to feel everything, and for us, to see a divine pattern to all of life—to guess the unseen. I want to step into the day and experience hundreds of sacred invitations to worship. I want to see the beauty behind all things and the joy hiding in ordinary moments. I want us to be people on whom nothing is lost. It’s another way of living out Thoreau’s mission to live deliberately. I loved these words of his:
I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practise resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life. . .
Live deep!