1 EASY Way to Make EVERY Day an ADVENTURE: A timeless essay turned blog post
This essay was published by G.K. Chesterton in 1933 under the title “On Running After One’s Hat”, and has since been studied by creative writing students everywhere. Now the classic essay has been translated and updated to fulfill its true destiny - to be a blog post with GIFs.
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I heard London has flooded while I’ve been away, and I feel wildly jealous of anyone who is there right now. I understand my own district of Battersea has been particularly blessed as a home for these waters.
Everyone knows that Battersea was already the most beautiful town on earth. Now that it has the added effect of great bodies of water, I’m sure no place could even compare to the landscape (or waterscape, I guess) of my own romantic town.
Battersea must feel like Venice. I imagine the boat that brought the meat from the butcher must have glided along those lanes of rippling silver with the smoothness of a gondola. I imagine the farmer who brought cabbages to the grocery must have paddled away with the unearthly grace of a gondolier.
There is nothing so perfectly poetical as an island, and when a city district is flooded it becomes like those of Hawaii.
You might think this romantic view of a flood is slightly unrealistic. But really this romantic view of inconveniences is just as practical as any other.
Truly optimistic people who see these things as opportunities for enjoyment are just as logical as the ordinary people who see an opportunity for complaining.
Real pain is having a toothache or getting beheaded; it really is hard to enjoy these things. But, in reality, our teeth are usually fine, and as for getting beheaded, it typically doesn’t happen too often in a person’s life.
So, most of the inconveniences that make people curse or cry really only happen in their imaginations. They exist only in their minds.
For example, we often hear grown-ups complaining about having to wait for a train at a railway station. But have you ever heard a small boy complain about having to hang around at a railway station and wait for a train?
No, because to him the railway station is a cavern of wonder and a palace of poetical pleasures. Because to him, the red light and the green light of the train signal are like a new sun and a new moon. Because to him, when the wooden arm of the signal suddenly falls down, it’s as if a great king has thrown down his scepter as a signal to his knights and begun a shrieking joust of trains.
I myself tend to think like the children here. Milton said, “They also serve who only stand and wait.” I say, “They also serve who only stand and wait for the 2:15.”
Instead of waiting anxiously, these grown-ups could be meditating on the richest and most fruitful thoughts. Some of the most magical hours of my life have been spent at Clapham Junction, which is now, I guess, under water. There have been times when my head has been so fixed and mystical that the water could have come up to my waist before I even noticed it.
But how you handle annoyances like this, as I’ve said, has everything to do with your point of view.
You can safely apply the test to almost every one of the things we usually think of as daily annoyances. For example, there seems to be a consensus that it’s irritating to have to chase down a runaway hat.
But why do orderly and pious people find it irritating? It can’t be because it’s simply running, and running is exhausting. The same people run much faster in games and sports. The same people run much more eagerly after an uninteresting, little leather ball than they will after a nice silk hat.
No, the real reason is that people think it’s humiliating to run after a hat. And when people say humiliating, what they really mean is hilarious.
It’s unquestionably hilarious, but people are very comic creatures, and most of the things they do are hilarious – eating, for instance. And the most hilarious things of all are exactly the things that are worth doing the most – such as making love. A man running after a hat is not half as ridiculous as a man running after a wife.
Now it’s possible for a man, if he felt good about himself, to run after his hat with the manliest courage and the most sacred joy. He might think of himself as a merry huntsman pursuing a wild animal, because there isn’t any doubt that no animal could be wilder.
In fact, I am inclined to believe that hat-hunting on windy days will be the sport of the upper class in the future. All the dignified ladies and gentlemen will meet on some hill on a gusty morning. They will be told that the referees have “tipped off” a hat in such-and-such a thicket, or whatever technical jargon they will use.
I hope you note that this activity will fully combine sport with humanitarianism, because the hunters would feel that they were inflicting no pain on anything. Instead, they would feel they were inflicting pleasure – rich, almost riotous pleasure – upon the people watching.
I recently saw an old gentleman running after his hat in Hyde Park, and I told him that a heart as generous as his ought to be filled with peace and thanks at the thought of how much uninhibited joy his every gesture and movement were at that moment giving to the crowd.
We can apply this same idea to every other common, daily worry.
A guy trying to get a fly out of the milk or a piece of cork out of his glass of wine often thinks he is irritated. If he would only think for a second about the patience of fishermen sitting by dark water, his soul would be immediately illuminated with thankfulness and rest.
I’ve known some people with very modern views who, driven by their distress, call upon the name of a deity they don’t believe in simply because a drawer was jammed tight and they couldn’t pull it out.
A friend of mine was particularly burdened by this. Every day his drawer was jammed, and every day he thought of new ways to call upon the Lord.
But I pointed out to him that this feeling of being wronged was actually subjective and relative. It was based entirely on the assumption that the drawer could, should, and would come out easily.
“But if,” I said, “you picture yourself as pulling against some powerful and oppressive enemy, the struggle will become exciting rather than exasperating. Imagine that you are pulling a lifeboat out of the sea. Imagine that you are roping up a fellow climber out of an Alpine crevasse. Or even imagine that you are a boy again and engaged in a tug-of-war at school.”
Shortly after saying this I left him, but I have no doubt at all that my words bore the best possible fruit. I have no doubt that every day of his life he hangs on to the handle of that drawer with a flushed face and eyes bright with battle, shouting encouraging sentiments to himself, and seeming to hear all around him the roar of an applauding Coliseum.
So, I don’t think it’s completely over-imaginative or unrealistic to suppose that even the floods in London could be accepted and enjoyed poetically. The only thing the flood has caused seems to be inconvenience. And this inconvenience, as I’ve said, is really only one aspect (the most unimaginative and accidental aspect) of quite a romantic situation.
“An adventure is only an inconvenience rightly considered. An inconvenience is only an adventure wrongly considered. ”
The water that surrounded the houses and shops of London must, if anything, have only increased their previous witchery and wonder. Because as they say, “Wine is good with everything except water,” and on a similar note, water is good with everything except wine.
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If you enjoyed the G.K. Chesterton paraphrase but haven’t read him before because he’s always been too old and British, then I have some exciting news so LISTEN UP, FRIENDS.
G.K Chesterton is my favorite author ever, and his book Orthodoxy is my favorite book, and you should drop everything and go read it right now.
His style of writing and big vocabulary, however, make it seem like he is just too much for the every day person like you and me. But as you can see, Chesterton is the opposite of dull. Orthodoxy is the most imaginative, adventurous, brilliant book on Christianity every written.
And so I can more easily share my favorite book with my friends, I HAVE REWRITTEN THE WHOLE THING. At some point in the hopefully-not-too-distant future you will be able to bask in the Christian classic without breaking a sweat.
The book is not yet published (I’m looking for help finding an agent and publisher, if you know anyone hit me up…) so SIGN UP FOR MY EMAIL NEWSLETTER NOW so that you don’t miss it when it comes out.
In the meantime, my bromance with G.K. will live on in the form of more posts about him here at peternorthcutt.com.
