François Jacob, Nobel Prize winner who died this spring, drew power from his credo, a formula for recreating one’s self:
My obsession: a life that shrivels up, slowly rots, goes soft as a pulp. This worry about decline grabs me by the throat as I awake. In the brief interval between dream and waking, it flaunts before my eyes the frenzied dance of everything I would have liked to do, and did not do, and never will. As I turn over and over in my bed, the fear of the too-late, of the irreversible, propels me to the mirror to shave and get ready for the day. And that is the moment of truth. The moment for the old questions. What am I today? Am I capable of renewal? What are the chances I might still produce something I do not expect of myself? For my life unfolds mainly in the yet-to-come, and is based on waiting. Mine is a life of preparation. I enjoy the present only insofar as it is a promise of the future. I am looking for the Promised Land and listening to the music of my tomorrows. My food is anticipation. My drug is hope. As a child, unable to bear the absence of a goal, I made out of trifles what I called “little lights” to illuminate the coming day or week. In writing this memoir, I am neither to wallow in the mire of self-satisfaction nor to settle old scores, but rather to set myself a new purpose, and thus a new existence. It is to take my past and produce the future. I am bored by what has been done, and excited only by what is to do. Were I to frame a prayer, I would ask to be granted not so much the “strength” as the “desire” to do.
(Quoted from page 183 of The Life of the Creative Spirit, by H. Charles Romesburg. Xlibris, 2001.)
For a brief biography of François Jacob, click here. For images of or relating to François Jacob, click here.
My obsession: a life that shrivels up, slowly rots, goes soft as a pulp. This worry about decline grabs me by the throat as I awake. In the brief interval between dream and waking, it flaunts before my eyes the frenzied dance of everything I would have liked to do, and did not do, and never will. As I turn over and over in my bed, the fear of the too-late, of the irreversible, propels me to the mirror to shave and get ready for the day. And that is the moment of truth. The moment for the old questions. What am I today? Am I capable of renewal? What are the chances I might still produce something I do not expect of myself? For my life unfolds mainly in the yet-to-come, and is based on waiting. Mine is a life of preparation. I enjoy the present only insofar as it is a promise of the future. I am looking for the Promised Land and listening to the music of my tomorrows. My food is anticipation. My drug is hope. As a child, unable to bear the absence of a goal, I made out of trifles what I called “little lights” to illuminate the coming day or week. In writing this memoir, I am neither to wallow in the mire of self-satisfaction nor to settle old scores, but rather to set myself a new purpose, and thus a new existence. It is to take my past and produce the future. I am bored by what has been done, and excited only by what is to do. Were I to frame a prayer, I would ask to be granted not so much the “strength” as the “desire” to do.
(Quoted from page 183 of The Life of the Creative Spirit, by H. Charles Romesburg. Xlibris, 2001.)
For a brief biography of François Jacob, click here. For images of or relating to François Jacob, click here.
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