The Happy Peasant

Robert G. Ingersoll wrote a famous piece about his visit to the tomb of Napoleon. He waxed poetic over the dramatic and frequently tragic events of the man's life. Anyone who has the least passing knowledge of European history knows of Napoleon's conquests, his exile, triumphant return and his final play at Waterloo. Ingersoll reminds us of all these things and more; the countless orphans and widows he had made, and even the loss of the love of his life due to his ambition.

Then Ingersoll seems to turn his back on that cold marble tomb to perhaps look off into the countryside. This is what he writes:

And I said I would rather have been a French peasant and worn wooden shoes. I would rather have lived in a hut with a vine growing over the door and the grapes growing purple in the kisses of the autumn sun. I would rather have been that poor peasant with my loving wife by my side, knitting as the day died out of the sky, with my children upon my knee and their arms about me. I would rather have been that man and gone down to the tongueless silence of the dreamless dust than to have been that imperial impersonation of force and murder known as Napoleon the Great.

It is a moving bit of prose that makes me think of the range of attitudes that people have today, and have always had, about how to approach life. The pursuit of the American dream was once that of the French peasant with his loving wife at his side, but it has become more Napoleonic as time has progressed.

This is nothing new. Men who dreamed of power have always existed. They were the clan leaders, the kings, the dictators, the industrialists and so on. They pushed all their lives for some vision of how the world could be, with them at the crest of the wave that was going to make the necessary changes. A very few have been benevolent, but all have consumed their lives to fulfill some vision of accomplishment, status and wealth.

Where I'm going with this is not a sociology lesson, nor a caution about the corrupting influence of power. Instead, this article is an invitation to examine your own life, to see if the dream that you hold in your mind's eye is something that will actually bring you happiness. Do you believe that the image of the happy peasant is even possible? For most married couples these days, it seems that there isn't any time to be a happy peasant. Both parents work, and the children are constantly occupied with television, school, sports, camps, hobbies and games. The demand to excel permeates the American experience, causing single people to look for spouses during various odd moments of their week and married people to try to relate to their spouse at similarly rare moments.

Napoleon was undoubtedly conducting his life at a feverish pitch, constantly working on this plan or that, dealing with this emergency or that, and so on. The happy peasant lives a much slower pace of life, savoring his interactions with the people around him. Do we no longer take the time to savor life because we are so compelled by a world running at a feverish pitch? Or do we conduct our lives at a feverish pitch because we no longer believe that there is anything left to savor?

When was the last time you thought about relaxing in a casual conversation with someone? Instead of enjoying your time in pleasant distraction, were you intent on some personal agenda, fulfilling some small vision of the day? Were you trying to find out the latest gossip? Proving a point? Winning the game?

A modern truism that applies here is to take time to stop and smell the roses. Roses are to be beheld as beautiful both in looks and in fragrant aroma. People can be beheld as beautiful in many ways as well. Physically, intellectually, emotionally and spiritually, we have a great capacity for beauty. Part of our ability to savor our lives is rooted in simply understanding that other people hold that capacity for beauty, even when unrealized. Ultimately, it may take a little savoring by others for us to really develop our own beauty.

The happy peasant sees the beauty in his lot in life, and he drinks deeply from it. It is my fervent hope that you can do the same, avoiding the oft-wasted effort of constantly improving your lot without ever enjoying what you have.