Have You Read This?

Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse

Photo by Justin Dream on Unsplash

My World Lit teacher, Mr. Anderson, was one of those teachers that you remember throughout your life.  He was fun, encouraging, insightful, and was as eager to learn from his students as he was to teach them.  I suppose it stands to reason that he would assign literary works that also managed to resonate over time.  One of these memorable stories was Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse.

After reading Siddhartha in high school, I took away one primary concept.  In his quest for nirvana, Siddhartha first had to immerse himself in all the trappings of humanity to make transcending them possible.  Like many young people, he needed to indulge in vices to confirm that they brought him no long-term comfort or happiness.  These indulgent behaviors served simply as fleeting relief from the pain of life.  Even though there was a part of him that always knew there was no salvation in the tumbling dice or the foggy elation of spirits, he had to experience them firsthand.  The wisdom of elders was not sufficient.  Life was meant to be lived.

I think about this often.  It has been a comfort when I’ve made mistakes and a motivator when I’ve been reluctant to take action.  It taught me that life is messy because none of us know what the hell is going on.  Trying things out, making mistakes, and learning from our failures and successes are all the building blocks of wisdom.  Or so I believed.  In the current climate, I’ve seen much evidence to the contrary.  Mistakes are now punishable on a grand scale.  Even mistakes made in your youth.  The freedom of trial and error is swiftly fading into a narrow box of requirements.  It is now expected that all the “good people” are perfect from the start and everyone who has stumbled along the way is inferior and therefore “bad people”.

This change in our societal expectations got me to wondering what Mr. Anderson would think about things today.  Would he double down on the books he loved or would he adjust to mirror the current climate?  Trends come and go; I truly hope we see this intolerance go and I hope it goes soon.  Realistically, though, the narrative of today might take a while to wear out its welcome.   I wonder, does classic literature suddenly find itself irrelevant in the hyper critical mindset of today?  Considering that the banning of books has come back into vogue, it is certainly a reasonable question.

Even though my sample size is quite small, I’ve decided to run my own, personal experiment by rereading books that had been influential or memorable to me.  My first reread was Siddhartha.  I had forgotten what a comforting read it was, or perhaps that aspect was not perceivable by my seventeen year old brain.  It reads like a mantra or meditation; its simple, poetic yet direct language leaves plenty of room for introspection.  For me, the passage of time has changed the impact of the story.  Where once it had been a cautionary tale for a young person, it now rings true in an entirely different way.

Ultimately, Siddhartha comes to realize that life is merely an infinite number of cycles.  Year after year, generation after generation, we all make the same mistakes and suffer the same losses.  As the passage of time illuminates these cycles in our own lives, it becomes easier to identify them everywhere.  Siddhartha sees himself as a child, when the book began, and becomes aware that he put his father through the same torment that now his son has bestowed upon him.  

The key to this realization is acknowledgement and acceptance.  Once Siddhartha sees the pattern, he is able to accept the inevitable with levity.  Although he suffers longing, and he knows he cursed his father with that same longing, he is able to find the beauty in this suffering because it is shared.  Much like the river that was a significant part of his development, Siddhartha is able to see that humanity is forever flowing through each specific moment at the same time that it is at every other moment.  In other words, there is always someone being born, dying, laughing, crying, etc.  It is almost as though Hesse was alluding to the multiverse theory!  

While Siddhartha’s pain is real, it becomes not only tolerable, but almost soothing when he sees his place within the chaotic circle of life.  In searching for nirvana, he discovers he’s not been able to avoid any of the pitfalls that trip us all.  His wisdom comes in being able to accept this fate and consent to it rather than attempting to fight it.

When I think about our culture today, I’d like to think I can apply the wisdom found in the pages of Siddhartha.  Yes, many are caught up in some of the crazy cycles that we’ve witnessed in crumbling empires throughout history; this will eventually pass.  The conventional wisdom found in literature, however, will endure.  

Those who believe they have the power to reinvent the wheel completely will most certainly be left scratching their heads, wondering how they missed out on the wisdom of shared experience.  I certainly recall the invincible, infallible arrogance of youth; that feeling that I would travel a different, more enlightened path because I had been anointed with all the answers.  Time is the only cure for such impetuous confidence, in spite of the fact that so much wisdom lies waiting in the pages of literature.