Did you ever see the “Halfway There Day” gag in the British comedy series Broken News (2005)? That spoof reported on the anniversary of the precise middle of World War II, as if soldiers back in the day had known when the conflict had reached its midpoint. If only we could know when any crisis in life was halfway over. Weirdly, maybe we can! And that might even be the secret to battle the angst that artists are famous for suffering.
Before we get back to Halfway There Day, might the following feelings be universal for artists? Always seeking to catch up, being met with hurdles following hurdles, feeling isolated or ostracized or estranged, being lonely even in company? It could be that the artistic path is somehow solitary in nature, but mustn’t there be more to it? What’s with the sense of feeling behind, frustrated that the goal always seems on the distant horizon? My theory: if the universe is expanding, we are forever only “halfway there” in what we’re doing and learning. The finish line is always stretching away from us as the universe expands. Even without a moving endpoint, one might flash to the famous problem of Greek philosophy, Zeno’s Paradox, in which walking to the end of a path requires getting to the halfway point, and that segment has its own halfway point, and on into infinity so that one never gets to the end.
Can one find comfort and satisfaction in feeling perpetually “halfway there” instead of winning the so-called race? (Or, as the popular expression puts it, “It’s the journey, not the destination”?) The concept of a Heaven implants the idea that there’s a final stopping place, but what if our spirits just keep on going and expanding? In such as case, we could never “make it” but would be permanently midway. Even so, striving toward a goal is necessary, as that keeps our momentum going as opposed to us falling into atrophy. Oh, I just found this passage, which possibly gets to the same points:
More and more our search into the hidden places of the universe reveals that everything is in motion and that nothing stands still. Nothing, that is, except the aimless life of a man. A tempest of motion continually goes on in the least of the elements. A soul that is going nowhere is an unnatural exception to the general rule. “Come” and “Go” are the divine words and the human opportunities. We solve our problems as we go. We meet our joys or overtake them. We find our true companions, divine and human, in the adventure of the journey toward our chosen goal. (“Saturday Night Thoughts in Boston,” 1920)
Is there one best way to feel satisfied along the way? In the course of my research as an independent scholar, I find it fun to discover multiple documented approaches to the same question, from ancient to modern times. (A collection of such finds is entitled Bullet Lists.) Recently, I encountered the following solutions to “the only way to be satisfied”:
- do what you believe is great work
- don’t accept your past as your future
- find the courage not to please everyone else
- stay hungry / remain dissatisfied
- don’t assume being doomed to continue patterns
- live life with purpose
- lower expectations
- employ the method of conducting and seeking but only incidentally finding
- see the glass as half full instead of half empty
- have less
- learn your true nature
- stay foolish
- appeal not to inward feelings but to outward actions
- suspend judgment
- foster contentment / serenity
- calm your mind
- be going somewhere
- discern between need and greed
- adopt the Hunterian maxim, “Don’t theorize; try experiments”
- be truthful with yourself and be willing to act on that truth
Let me know which of those wisdom nuggets is promoting your own peace of mind and how you plan to celebrate Halfway There Day today, tomorrow, the day after tomorrow …
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