BRAZEN RECOMMENDS: E.E. Cummings on Art, Life and Being Unafraid to Feel | Brain Pickings
Illustration from Enormous Smallness by Matthew Burgess, an illustrated tribute to E.E. Cummings, via Brain Pickings.
The Courage to Be Yourself: E.E. Cummings on Art, Life, and Being Unafraid to Feel
This beautiful piece by Maria Popova arrived in my email inbox as part of the Brain Pickings midweek newsletter, which dives into the website’s 14-year archive to resurface and resavour old gems. In this one, she celebrates E.E. Cummings’ advice to young poets, which can be applied by most anyone seeking to live a more beautiful, fulfilling life. He describes the poet as “somebody who feels, and who expresses his feelings through words. This may sound easy. It isn’t.” This is because no one can teach you how to feel — you can be taught how to think or to believe, he says, “but the moment you feel, you’re nobody-but-yourself.” And to stay true to that, to navigate being nobody-but-yourself without a roadmap, is both liberating and terrifying. In his words:
“To be nobody-but-yourself — in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else — means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight.”
Click through to read the rest of this inspiring excerpt along with Maria Popova’s commentary (always so beautifully written!).
