As a young woman - or at least younger than I am now, for I still cling onto the mantle of youth – I felt certain that I should live my life according to my principles. What these principles were, I wasn’t sure. But I felt certain that I should have them, and should stand by them through thick and thin. As I have grown older – or at least older than I am now, for I do still begrudgingly acknowledge the aging process – I have realised that there is no room for principles. They are the luxury of a life not yet lived. Older people know that there is not enough time left to lie to yourself. What use is a principle when you’ve lived enough to know that you will have to give them up somewhere along the line? Your principles can do nothing to protect you from life’s rip tides.
Foolishly, when I was younger I thought I might live my life according to Art. I thought I might live to create Art, and somehow that would protect me against the onslaught of adulthood, and the judgment of those wealthier and more put together than myself. I thought that I would not care as much as I do; I imagined the future as though it would not be me living it. That I would magically become different at some point - we’re all guilty of that, I hope. I thought that the whims of others could not touch me; that I would be impervious to them somehow. To my younger self, the future was something to guess that, rather than something that would happen. As you grow older, you realise that the future is not your plaything; rather, you are its. It is truly a thunking realisation when you inevitably have it; very few of us ever recover from it.
Principles are one of two things; the idea that either you will be different at some point, or the idea that you will remain the same. Having lived more life now - at least marginally more anyhow - I can honestly say that neither is realistic, and that principles are a farce. Life will mould you and change you, but not nearly as much as your principles would have you believe. It is that duality with which people live, and it is that duality in which people founder. Principles are just the things you told yourself when you didn’t know any better. We reckon with them until we learn to let them go.
The irony of this, of course, is that I am a writer now. Which is exactly what I always dreamt I would be. Except it feels different to how I imagined it; more prosaic, more mundane. It does not feel how my principles convinced me it ought to feel. When you’re young, you feel certain that writers don’t need jobs. You assume that jobs happen to them, you see; as a writer, you go with your instincts and you choose unconventionality, always. When you read the biographies of the greats, their lives seem to flow like a river, with deliberation and purpose, but without the precision of self-determination. You assume that that is how it will be for you too. When you get older, and it is time to put all your hypotheses about what it means to be a writer into practice, you realise that a job is the only thing you need, and that you would pretty much bite the head off a baby caterpillar to have one.
You realise that unconventionality is mere pretence; that convention is the foodstuff of all good art. Nobody wants to hear about unconventional people leading unconventional lives, being aware of how utterly unconventional they are compared to us mere mortals, and keen to somehow always get a word in edgeways about how happy they are being as unconventional as they are. That thing you were so keen to brush off at parties, the interminable humdrumness of it all, is the very thing you ought to be tapping into if you are to write anything at least partly convincing. Everybody wants to hear about the blandness behind the curtain, the grindingly slow gears of a life poorly lived, the disappointments and the unrealised. No one wants to catch wind of your principles and how they ‘set you apart’ from others. It makes a person seem terribly off-putting.
Louis MacNeice spoke of becoming 'part of the pattern in the lino’. I’m not sure he meant it in a positive light. But there’s something to be said about being part of the pattern in the lino. What there is to be said about it is this; that you do not consider yourself too proudly as to be unaware that we are all, no matter how unconventional we seek to be or how many principles we want to impress other people with, reassuringly ordinary. If we all saw a little more beauty in the ordinary, they’d be no need to give up our principles in the first place.
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