Jahanna Bolding

Think for a moment: how often do you glance at a thick, putrid mud puddle as you walk past it on the street and, instead of side-stepping it and plugging your nose with an air of disgust, you think, “Wow, what a miraculous gift!” I would venture to guess that the latter reaction is the less common of the two. We tend to perceive the ins and outs of daily life as a string of unwanted and seemingly incurable annoyances. Sure, there are occasional joys, but only on truly wonderful days when the sun is shining, birds are singing, and pizza is close at hand.

But, why do we only find joy, rest, and contentment on these days? Don’t get me wrong; peaceful days where everything seems to flow together with effortless grace are a rare and marvelous blessing, but that is precisely my point: these days are rare. What would happen if we approached all of life – bees, fingerprints, eyebrows, traffic, poor grades, and yes, even mud puddles – with the same excitement with which we approach the days full of bliss? What if, for some reason, we applied a perspective of humble, unrestrained imagination to the mundane and frustrating?

G. K. Chesterton is here to aid us in answering this question as we analyze three of his witty, whimsical, wondrous essays: “On Running After One’s Hat,” “What I Found in My Pocket,” and “The Spice of Life.”

In “On Running After One’s Hat,” published in 1908, Chesterton acknowledges that many general inconveniences in life are lamented – but why? Chesterton is known for a certain humorous optimism that is prevalent in his work. Understanding optimism is key to understanding much of Chesterton’s perspective, as he begins with the argument that, “The true optimist who sees in such things an opportunity for enjoyment is quite as logical and much more sensible than the ordinary ‘Indignant Ratepayer’ who sees in them an opportunity for grumbling” (21).

In Chesterton’s view, finding joy in inconveniences, such as running after one’s hat, are not just romantic fancy, but is actually logical. Humans just despise such activities because they believe them to be “humiliating” and “when people say it is humiliating they mean that it is comic” (22). But man is a humorous creature; he is often awkward and fragile and just outright silly – and thus he should embrace such hilarity. And, with an altered perspective (one filled to the brim with imagination), running after your hat can be a wild adventure, and then “the struggle will become merely exciting and not exasperating… An adventure is only an inconvenience rightly considered. An inconvenience is only an adventure wrongly considered” (24). This imaginative perspective leads to jubilance and excitement in the mundane and mediocre – and isn’t this exactly how we all want to (and indeed should) live our lives? We yearn to be satisfied in our reality, yet we do not pursue contentment in simplicity or annoyance. We do not attempt to flip our perspective upside down in awe of what we have been given.

This perspective continues in Chesterton’s “What I Found in My Pocket,” published in 1909. Chesterton is on an agonizingly dull train ride where there is no satisfactory external stimulation. There seems to be nothing at all in his surroundings that has the potential to provoke thought. Well, no stimulation apart from the treasure trove tucked away in his pockets, waiting. Of course, Chesterton begins by stating, “I deny most energetically that anything is, or can be, uninteresting” (36). Therefore, he turns out his pockets and reimagines the trinkets he finds. Immediately, this spark of imagination transforms Chesterton’s perspective, much to the delight of the reader. Old railway tickets become fluttering confetti or notepads with numerous advertisements on the back that offer controversial reading material which has the potential for long hours of fruitful thought. A pocket-knife becomes a mysterious metal that leads Chesterton “off half-dazed into a kind of dream” (38). He describes it as a “secret sword” of delight, which leads to pondering the process of forging, the glory of battle, and the profundity of symbolism (38). Matches become conduits for the forbidden and untamable fire. A mere fragment of chalk becomes the avenue to “all the frescoes of the world” (38). Though the descriptions more or less end here, Chesterton admits, “I have not space to say what were the items in the long and splendid procession of poetical symbols that came pouring out” (38).

What wonders are simply waiting to be found in our world, even in the trinkets that we cart around in our pockets, purses, or backpacks! And yet, we crave things that are bigger, better, more entertaining. We disregard the minuscule, and in doing so miss the simplistic but ubiquitous beauties we have been given.

Chesterton furthers his argument in “The Spice of Life,” published posthumously in 1964. This essay is published in a different culture than the previous essays – a post-war, post-depression culture that is smack dab in the middle of civil rights, the sexual revolution, turbulent and tragic political circumstances, etc. Nevertheless, despite the slight time jump, Chesterton is still speaking to the deeper, constant issues prevalent in human nature, and his argument is incredibly relevant.

In “The Spice of Life,” Chesterton argues that joy is still waiting in unexpected places, and it is often up to you to seek it and seize it. Chesterton concludes in this essay that we are all seeking ultimate satisfaction in the grand and lively things in life. This is a fair assumption, right? We believe that our deepest longings and hopes and dreams and ideals will satisfy us. Yet, Chesterton submits, “I am more and more convinced that neither in your special spices nor in mine, neither in honey-pots nor quart-pots, neither in mustard nor in music, nor in any other distraction from life, is the secret we are all seeking, the secret of enjoying life” (378). Well, this is inconvenient. What is the secret to enjoying life, then?

“You have to be happy in those quiet moments when you remember you are alive; not in those noisy moments when you forget. Unless we can learn again to enjoy life, we shall not long enjoy the spices of life” (378). In Chesterton’s mind, the grand and flashy things of this world lose their flavor quickly. We can relate to this, right? Aren’t expectations often disappointed, or met and then quickly deflated? So, perhaps our problem is that, in order to enjoy this spice of life, we must first enjoy the seemingly bland. We must have imagination in the ordinary, or the grand will taste of cardboard.

We need perspective, imaginative perspective, to see the “deepest reality” (381) – a reality in which dirty tree bark is magical, fingernails are miracles, and ditch-water “teems with quiet fun” (379). However, before we can truly pursue this imaginative perspective, we need humility to understand how small we are and how lavishly we have been blessed. Only then can we truly enjoy life in this manner and see the common grace we have been given – when we, in humility and patience, grab our imagination goggles and restructure our perspective.

Collection of Essays referenced: In Defense of Sanity