Chapter 16: Changing as a Way of Living

The Words: José Enrique Rodó, 1909

At the opening of a long book called Motives of Proteus, published in 1909, José Enrique Rodó set down a short sentence that became famous among readers of Spanish. In my own words, he says: to reform oneself is to live. He goes on to say that change in ourselves is a steady law of time: each of us is, one after another, not one person but many. We are not broken because we keep changing; changing is simply what being alive looks like. Proteus, the name in the title, is a sea god from the old myths told in Greek, who could take any shape he wished. Rodó chose him as a picture of the human person, who is never finished and never fixed in one form.

The book is not a single argument but a large collection of short pieces: reflections, small parables and portraits of people who changed the course of their lives. Rodó worked on it for years. He wanted to help readers, especially young ones, to see their own character as something they could shape with care and patience. He did not promise that change is easy. He only said that a life which stops renewing itself is already beginning to fade.

The Life Behind the Words

Rodó was born in 1871 in South America and wrote in Spanish. He was a quiet, serious man who loved books more than crowds. As a young writer he helped to start a literary magazine, and in 1900 he published a short book called Ariel, written as an old teacher's farewell talk to his students. In it the teacher asks the young to keep a part of their lives for beauty, thought and the inner life, and not to give all of it to work and money. Ariel made Rodó known to readers of Spanish in many lands.

Motives of Proteus came nine years later and grew out of the same hope. Rodó believed that each person carries many possible selves, and that a good life is one in which we keep choosing, again and again, which of them to grow. He was not writing about sudden, dramatic change. He meant the slow daily work of correcting a habit, opening a closed mind, or finding a new interest at forty or at sixty. He died in 1917, while travelling, but his book still speaks to anyone who feels stuck in an old shape.

What the Words Ask of Us

Many of us fear change in ourselves. We say "this is just how I am", as if character were a stone. Rodó asks us to see it more like a growing tree. To reform oneself does not mean to become someone else. It means to keep the best of what we are and to let go, little by little, of what no longer helps us. Seen this way, change is not a sign that something is wrong. It is a sign that we are still alive inside.

Think of Mira, who is fifty-two and has always been impatient with her grown son. One evening she notices that she interrupts him every time he begins to explain something. She does not decide to become a new person overnight. She simply tries, for one week, to let him finish every sentence. It feels strange at first. By the end of the week their talks are longer and warmer. Nothing dramatic has happened, and yet Mira has reformed herself a little, and their life together has grown a little.

Similar Words From Around the World

Long before Rodó, Aristotle wrote in Greek, at the start of the second book of his Nicomachean Ethics, that we become just by doing just acts and brave by doing brave acts. Good character, in his view, is not a gift we receive once. It is built by practice, in the way a person learns to play a musical instrument by playing it. This adds something useful to Rodó's words. If change is life, then the way to change is to act, today, a little like the person we hope to become, and to repeat it until it is ours.

The Daodejing, an old book of wisdom in Chinese, says in its seventy-sixth chapter that living things are soft and bending, while dead things are hard and stiff. A young plant bends in the wind; a dry branch snaps. So, the text says, the stiff belong with death, and the soft and supple belong with life. Rodó would have agreed. A person who can still bend, learn and adjust is like the green branch. The echo adds a gentle warning: the greatest danger is not change but becoming so hard that we can no longer change at all.

Living It Today

Rodó's words can help at any age. A student who failed an exam can see it as a turn in the road rather than a final judgement. Someone in the middle of a career can try a new skill without feeling foolish. A person who has just retired can discover that the self still has rooms that were never opened. In each case the message is the same: you are allowed to grow, and growing means changing.

This week, choose one small habit you would like to change, the smallest one you can find. It might be looking at your phone first thing in the morning, or answering too quickly when you are tired. Change it for seven days, and notice how it feels. You will not become a different person, but you will remember that you can still shape the person you are. That is what Rodó meant by living.

Chapter 17: Gentleness on a Day of Envy

The Words: Ishikawa Takuboku, 1910

In 1910 Ishikawa Takuboku published his first book of tanka, a short form of poem in Japanese, under the title A Handful of Sand. One of its poems is among the most loved of all his work. In my own words, it says: on a day when all my friends seem greater than I am, I buy flowers, bring them home, and spend the time gently with my wife. That is all. There is no lesson written out and no grand ending. There is only a man who feels small, and the quiet thing he chooses to do with that feeling.

The poem is honest in a way that surprises many readers. Takuboku does not pretend that he is above envy. He admits that he has looked at his friends and felt left behind. What makes the poem shine is the next step. Instead of sinking into bitterness, or trying hard to prove himself, he turns towards something near and simple: a few flowers and the company of the person he lives with.

The Life Behind the Words

Takuboku was born in 1886 in a small village in East Asia, the son of a priest at a Buddhist temple. As a boy he was bright and full of hope, and he dreamed of becoming a great poet. Life did not make it easy. He left school early, moved from job to job, and was often poor. For a time he worked as a schoolteacher and as a newspaper reporter, and later he worked at a large newspaper, checking the printed pages for mistakes. He often had to borrow money, and he worried about how to support his family.

He wrote his tanka in plain, everyday words, about real feelings: tiredness, longing for the home of his childhood, small joys, and the ache of not yet being what he hoped to be. Many readers saw their own lives in them. He did not live long. He died of illness in 1912, at the age of twenty-six, less than two years after this book appeared. Yet his short poems are still read and loved more than a century later, perhaps because they speak so honestly about the ordinary heart.

What the Words Ask of Us

Almost everyone has days like the one in the poem. A friend gets a promotion, another publishes a book, another seems to have a perfect family, and we feel that we are standing still. Takuboku's words do not ask us to stop feeling this. They ask us what we will do next. His answer is not to compete harder, and not to hide in sadness, but to come back to the small good things that are already ours. Envy turns our eyes far away; the flowers bring them back home.

Picture Daniel, twenty-nine, looking through pictures of old classmates who seem to be doing better than he is. He feels heavy. On his way home he stops and buys a small bunch of yellow flowers for the table. He cooks dinner with his partner, and they talk about nothing important. The next morning the classmates are just as successful as before. But Daniel's evening was real and warm, and it belonged to him. That, too, is a kind of success, and it is one that no one else can measure.

Similar Words From Around the World

More than three hundred years earlier, Michel de Montaigne wrote in French, in the last of his Essays, called Of Experience, that our great and glorious masterpiece is to live fittingly. He meant that the greatest work of a human being is not a famous deed but a life lived well, moment by moment, as each moment asks. Takuboku's evening with flowers is exactly such a small masterpiece. The echo reminds us that a day with no achievement can still be a day well lived.

The old book of the thinker Zhuangzi, written in Chinese, ends its first chapter with the story of a huge tree that carpenters call useless, because its wood is twisted and good for nothing. Zhuangzi answers that one should plant such a tree in an open field and rest in its shade. Its "uselessness" is what keeps it safe, and what makes it a gift to anyone who rests beneath it. On a day when we feel less useful than our friends, this story is a comfort. Our worth is not only in what we produce. Sometimes it is in the shade we give to the people close to us.

Living It Today

Takuboku's poem speaks to anyone who has ever compared themselves with others: a student looking at classmates' marks, a parent watching other families, an older person who sees friends travelling or winning prizes. It does not shame the feeling. It offers a way through it. Turn from what you lack to what you can give, even if it is only a little time, a little care and a few flowers.

The next time you feel smaller than the people around you, try Takuboku's way on purpose. Buy or pick a few flowers, or make a cup of tea for someone at home, or call a person you love just to talk. Spend one hour gently, without measuring yourself against anyone. Envy may come back tomorrow, but you will know a path out of it. A handful of flowers can light up a whole evening.