Henry Miller’s advice on measuring fulfilment in life

Eight years before his death in 1980, the celebrated writer Henry Miller published a limited-edition “chapbook” entitled On Turning Eighty. One of its three essays concerns growing old and measuring your own fulfillment. Here’s a selection of its most insightful life lessons.

“If at 80, you’re not a cripple or an invalid, if you have your health, if you still enjoy a good walk, a good meal (with all the trimmings), if you can sleep without taking a pill, if birds and flowers, mountains and sea still inspire you, you are a most fortunate individual.”

“If you can fall in love again and again, if you can forgive your parents for the crime of bringing you into the world, if you are content to get nowhere, just take each day as it comes; if you can forgive as well as forget... you’ve got it half licked.”

“No matter how restricted my world may become, I cannot imagine it leaving me void of wonder. In a sense, I suppose it might be called my religion. I do not ask how it came about, this creation in which we swim, but only to enjoy and appreciate it.”

“The future of the world is something for philosophers and visionaries to ponder on. All we ever really have is the present, but very few of us ever live it.”

“At 80, I believe I am a far more cheerful person than I was at twenty or thirty. I most definitely would not want to be a teenager again. Youth may be glorious, but it is also painful to endure.”

“I learned nothing of value at school. I don’t believe I could pass a grammar school test on any subject even today. I learned more from idiots and nobodies than from professors of this and that. Life is the teacher, not the Board of Education.”

“Whatever I do, I do first for enjoyment…  A short life and a merry one is far better than a long life sustained by fear, caution, and perpetual medical surveillance.” 

“Observe your children making the same absurd mistakes you made at their age. There is nothing you can say or do to prevent it. It’s by observing the young that you eventually understand the sort of idiot you yourself were once upon a time – and perhaps still are.”

“With advancing age, my ideals – which I usually deny possessing – have definitely altered. My ideal is to be free of ideals, free of principles, free of –isms and ideologies. I want to take to the ocean of life like a fish takes to the sea.”