I’m drawn to serious people.

                  Thud. There it is, a declaration sleep has plopped onto the doorstep of day. Sleep, when sound, tends to seriousness. Here is Truth, it harrumphs – now tell me why. This exploratory process takes precedence over the less serious, often trivial, demands of dawn: ablutions, dish-stowing, breakfast for Carll and Henry, and the like. They must wait. If Jane were awake, greeting her would be serious business, but she’s blessedly not. Why do we smile at a loved one’s sleep? Grist for another dawn.

                 What, for starters, Carll, is meant by “serious”? (My fingers are flickering now.) You do not mean powerful – rich – somber – strident – smart. Often, when a rich person salutes another as “serious”, they mean rich. I cringe. Too often the rich are the least serious persons imaginable, engrossed by gewgaws and trinkets. I do not necessarily mean ambitious, though seriousness is ambitious. 

                  Etymology helps, as a sort of existential GPS. At the base of any word is a concept, from which seed subsequent definitions and nuances flower. My Oxford Dictionary is a genius at tracing this fruiting. “Serious” sprouted from two related concepts, back in its (Latin) day: late and weighty. The later it gets the more serious one gets – about completing whatever one’s begun. My life’s a project not half done and soon my sun will set – yikes!

                  A serious person, then, is in a hurry to do whatever it is they do – so get out of their way! They do not welcome diversions, distractions, even delights. Their focus is immaterial: any sliver of the world’s infinitude can be taken seriously; what matters is drive. They mean to fulfill their time, not just fill it. Do or die.

                  Thoreau crafted the best description of seriousness. I reiterate it at length, because for me these words are as germane as the Lord’s Prayer, Pledge of Allegiance, or Gettysburg Address, tattooed on consciousness since our first encounter fifty-six years ago. We may recall an hour of infatuation; I remember exactly when I first read these:

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.

In three seemingly simple, elaborately perfected, sentences, I found my prayer for me: both my aesthetic prayer – to compose words as authentic and memorable as these – and moral prayer – to “live deep and suck out all the marrow of life.”

                  Unserious folks, while they may skate across life’s surfaces gracefully and amiably, irk me with their indifference to life’s importance. Their shrugs insensibly insult the dedication I esteem. Henry James’ Strether Lambert makes a similar point when, in The Ambassadors, he advises Little Bilham: 

Live all you can; it’s a mistake not to. It doesn’t so much matter what you do in particular, so long as you have your life. If you haven’t had that what have you had?

                  I’ve no idea what my life’s project is, only to heed those two sermons: “Live deliberately,” “Live all you can,” and (for both preachers) say what you see; more colloquially, “don’t sweat the small stuff.” Folks not engaged in that calling get my goat.

                  Now it’s breakfast time.