Chapter 12: To Exist Is to Keep Creating Ourselves

The Words: Henri Bergson, 1907

In 1907, the philosopher Henri Bergson published Creative Evolution, a book about life, time and change. In its first chapter, he asks what it means for a conscious being, a being that feels and remembers, to exist. In my own words, he says: for such a being, to exist is to change; to change is to mature; and to mature is to go on creating oneself without end. Bergson does not see change as a loss or a danger. He sees it as the very form of life. We are not finished objects. We are works in progress, and the work never stops.

The Life Behind the Words

Henri Bergson was born in 1859 and wrote in French. As a young student he was very gifted in mathematics, but he chose philosophy. He became a teacher, and later a professor whose public lectures were so popular that the hall was often full long before he arrived. His central idea was about time. Clock time, he said, divides life into equal pieces, like marks on a ruler. But the time we actually live, which he called duration, flows like a melody, in which each note carries the notes before it.

For Bergson, our past does not disappear. It is carried within us and grows at every moment, like a snowball rolling forward over snow. This is why we are always new: each present moment adds to everything we have been. His ideas reached far beyond philosophy, and artists, writers and ordinary readers found them full of hope. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature for 1927, for the richness of his ideas and the skill with which he expressed them. He died in 1941, in a time of war, at the age of eighty-one.

What the Words Ask of Us

Bergson's words free us from a common fear: the fear that we are fixed. People often say "I am just like this" or "it is too late for me to change". Bergson suggests the opposite. If to exist is to change, then we are changing whether we notice it or not. The question is not whether we will change, but whether we will take part in the change with care. To mature, in his sense, is not to grow old and stiff. It is to keep shaping ourselves, at every age, out of everything we have lived.

Think of Pedro, who is fifty-two and has worked for many years as a bookkeeper. One day he goes to a pottery class with a friend, mostly for fun. To his surprise, he loves it. His first bowls are uneven and lean to one side. But as the months pass, his hands learn, and something in him changes too: he becomes more patient, more playful and more open to trying. Pedro has not become a different man. He is still himself, carrying his whole past. But he is creating himself further, just as Bergson described.

Similar Words From Around the World

About two and a half thousand years ago, the thinker Heraclitus, who wrote in Greek, taught that everything moves and nothing stays still. As Plato reports his words in the dialogue Cratylus (402a), Heraclitus said that you could not step twice into the same river. The water flows on, and the river is always new. This echo shows that Bergson's idea is very old. But Bergson adds something that Heraclitus does not say here. Change is not only something that happens around us. In a conscious being, change can be growth, a creative act in which we take part.

In 1212, the writer Kamo no Chōmei, who wrote in Japanese, began his short book An Account of My Hut with a famous image. In my own words: the flowing river never stops, and yet its water is never the same water. Chōmei wrote after living through a great fire, a whirlwind, a famine and an earthquake, and he used the river to show that nothing in the world stays fixed. His tone is quieter and sadder than Bergson's, yet both men look at the same river. Chōmei teaches us to accept change calmly, and Bergson teaches us to welcome it as the way life keeps creating.

Living It Today

Bergson's words can help people at every stage of life. A teenager who feels stuck with a label from childhood can remember that the self is still being made. Someone who has lost a job or a partner can see the loss as the start of a new chapter, not the end of the story. A person who has retired can take up something new, knowing that maturing does not stop at any age. Even on an ordinary day, each of us is a little different from yesterday.

This week, try one small act of self-creation. Choose something you have never done, or have not done for many years: draw a picture, cook a new dish, learn the name of a bird, write a short letter by hand. Do it without worrying about doing it well. Afterwards, notice that you are now a person who has done this thing. That is what Bergson meant: we keep making ourselves, one small new act at a time, for as long as we live.

Chapter 13: Turning Trouble Into Adventure

The Words: G. K. Chesterton, 1908

In 1908, the writer G. K. Chesterton published a collection of short newspaper essays called All Things Considered. One of them, "On Running After One's Hat", begins with floods that had filled the streets of his city while he was away. Instead of complaining, Chesterton says he almost envies the people who saw them, because a flooded street must have been a strange and wonderful sight. He then turns to small daily troubles, such as chasing a hat that the wind has blown away. And he arrives at his famous conclusion: "An inconvenience is only an adventure wrongly considered; an adventure is an inconvenience rightly considered."

The Life Behind the Words

Gilbert Keith Chesterton was born in 1874. He first studied art, then became a journalist, and for the rest of his life he wrote with enormous energy: essays, poems, novels, books about history and faith, and a famous series of detective stories about a gentle priest called Father Brown. He was a very large man with a loud laugh, and he loved to argue with friends who disagreed with him while staying on warm terms with them. Readers knew him for his love of surprising ideas. He often turned a familiar thought upside down to show something true.

Behind all this cheerfulness was a deep sense of wonder. Chesterton believed that ordinary life, with its streets, families, weather and small accidents, was far stranger and more wonderful than people usually noticed. For him, gratitude and surprise were the right ways to meet the world. The essay about the hat is light and funny, but it comes from this serious belief. He died in 1936.

What the Words Ask of Us

Chesterton's sentence asks us to look again at the troubles of an ordinary day. A missed bus, a sudden rain, a long wait in a queue: these are inconveniences, and we usually meet them with irritation. But the same events, seen from another side, are small adventures. Things are not going according to plan, something unexpected is happening, and we must respond. Chesterton is not saying that every trouble is fun. He is saying that our attitude decides much of how a trouble feels.

Picture Ines, a woman in her forties, on her way home when her train stops between stations for an hour. People around her sigh and complain, and Ines feels the same irritation rising. Then she remembers Chesterton's hat. She starts a conversation with the old man beside her, who tells her about his years as a sailor, and she shares the oranges in her bag with a tired child across the aisle. When the train finally moves, she realises that she has had one of the most interesting evenings of the month.

Similar Words From Around the World

An old book in Chinese called the Huainanzi, from the 100s BCE, tells the story of an old man living near the frontier whose horse ran away (chapter 18). His neighbours called it bad luck, but he asked how they could be sure. Later the horse came back, bringing a fine new horse with it. Then his son fell from the new horse and was badly hurt, and again the old man would not say whether it was bad luck. In the end, the son's injury kept him at home and safe when a war came. The echo adds patience to Chesterton's playfulness: we often cannot tell at once what a trouble will lead to.

In the play Hamlet, written about 1600 by William Shakespeare, who wrote in English, the young prince says that "there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so" (act 2, scene 2). In the play, Hamlet is in a dark mood, and he says this to explain why the world feels like a prison to him. But the line also works the other way. If thinking can turn the world into a prison, thinking can also open its doors. Chesterton shows the bright side of Hamlet's thought: a change in how we consider a thing can turn an inconvenience into an adventure.

Living It Today

Chesterton's idea can help many people. A child kept indoors on a rainy day can turn the living room into a ship at sea. A parent whose plans are spoiled by a late delivery can use the waiting time to read. A traveller whose journey is delayed can explore the station like a new town. An older person whose body moves more slowly now can treat a slow walk as a chance to notice more. Some troubles are too serious to be called adventures, and Chesterton never asked us to pretend otherwise. But many small ones can be.

This week, the next time something small goes wrong, try saying quietly to yourself: this is an adventure wrongly considered. Then ask what the adventure might be. Is there someone to talk to, something new to see, a skill to use? You may not always find an answer, and that is fine. But often you will. And the more you practise, the more your ordinary days may begin to feel like the lively, surprising world that Chesterton saw all around him.