Whimsical, Responsible

My children’ s school gives an assignment in 7th grade called Six Word Memoir. My older son’s, composed four years ago, still hangs on my study wall: My Brother, Sometimes Annoying, Always Fun.

I love this assignment. The near impossibility of it. The extreme compression. Because even when you are only 12, there is too much life to squeeze into six words. The results must omit. Boil down to the essence.

I went to see the Mary Oliver movie, and came home to read the Mary Oliver work. There’s a quality in Oliver’s work of boiling the entirety of the universe down to a few sharp, heart-rending truths. In her essay collection, Upstream, I came upon this, a Seven Word Guide to Life:

You must not ever stop being whimsical.

I love the “not ever” rather than “never”. It is somehow more emphatic, the great urgency with which she shares this more-than-advice, this almost dire warning. Don’t you dare, is implied.

But wait, there’s more. She has a second part to the guide, just as good:

And you must not, ever, give anyone else the responsibility for your life.

This time the “ever” is surrounded, adamantly, by commas, for added fierceness. She’s not messing around. Not. Ever. A bracing, not-for-the-faint-of-heart rule for living.