The Dangers of Being World Weary

 Marcus Alden Meredith

October 3, 2024

The Dangers of Being “World Weary”

Reflections on Aging and Creativity

“I remember my mother used to say things about getting older,” my mother said. Sitting in her chair, hooked up to oxygen tanks, she had grown fragile to my sad eyes,  but her light-up-the-room smile was still there. “What’s that, Mom?” Then, with the light of her smile turned up just a notch like an aging incandescent lamp, she said, “Getting old ain’t for sissies.” Thirteen years later and I’ve never forgotten that moment. But what also stuck with me is how “world weary” she seemed as well, like working hard to stay alive was taking its toll. When I think back today, I start to realize that her weariness wasn’t just from her failing lungs, but her world weariness had come from having seen so much change, having lost her parents, lamenting that the world might never know a true time of peace… and it was getting heavy on her life force.

I saw that same look recently on an actress in a movie. Kate Winslet as Lee Miller in the movie Lee. The gist of the film is the story of Lee Miller who started her life as a model then became a photographer for VOGUE which then enabled her to become a war correspondent for the magazine during WWII giving her access to the front lines - a very unusual and unique position for a woman at the time. What she experiences on the front, the people and events she sees, and being one of the first correspondents to enter the concentration camp of Dachau… it was that same world weary look that I saw on mother’s face. For her, it was a countenance she had most definitely earned. For Lee Miller, she’d earned that countenance too. The time this kind of weariness becomes dangerous is when  you find it on someone who is younger… someone who physically, mentally, psychologically the world has simply beaten into a kind of submission. In war time, there were soldiers who were said to have  the “thousand yard stare.” That far off, not focused on any one thing stare that was as blank as it was disturbing. The classic signs of PTSD. Now, it’s not nearly the same look that I’m concerned about here… it’s the beginnings of this state of being that I’m most concerned about. It’s the creeping mental anguish that sucks out all of your life force and darkens the once bright eyes that used to look out on the world with hope and surprise. To lose that… THAT is to be truly “world weary.”

It’s at this time, when our essence needs a rest, that I reach for The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows for the words to explain the things that may bring on such feelings in the midst of a fall bloom of life. For our discussion of being world weary, the first word I found is Ioche: the anxiety of being an individual. The explanation of the word meaning begins by asking us to, “ Imagine how much courage it takes to come into this world all by yourself… For the first time, the realization hits: you’re on your own.” This sense of ‘aloneness’ is something that tugs at us constantly, even in out relationships because it is a constant of our existence that we must come to terms with.  You can be married, have friends, children, other wonderful relationships, but those “others” will never be able to experiences what’s going on inside your head - a world meant for a singular intellect by fact and evolutionary design. The explanation of Ioche goes on, “Strange to find yourself floating in a sea of billions, only a few of whom you’ll ever get a chance to know and trust.” And it’s here, at this point in the explanation that it hits me hard why I write… so that others can know “me” in some meaningful way that will, possibly, even outlast me. This is the power of the word on the page. It’s also the place where world weariness can start to be expressed somehow. And if not the words on the page, then the mote on the musical line that only the composer knows from whence it came, but delivered to the world as a gift, a hope, and a memory wit feelings attached. I go to the music like that of Beethoven, Bach, or Schubert often but I also gravitate to the modern film composers like Williams, Goldsmith,  Zimmer, Newton Howard and more to find the chords to match my mood and mind. And even when they leave us ( for we are born alone and die alone) what they accomplished will be able to reach our world weariness and speak to us. How many times have I turned on their music and reached to read Rilke, I cannot count. But it matches my mental drive and helps keep the weariness of the world at bay. It’s their works, from minds we will never “get inside” that helps to keep the world flowing; the darkness of the ‘weariness’ off in the distance.

While writing this essay, a friend of mine who is an artist wondered aloud where this left other people like he is who doesn’t write story of song? It made me pause and reminded me to watch him work. There was this clarity of vision he possessed as he worked that I almost envied as the paint left the brush for the canvas. “But your brush is pen and paper,” he reminded me (me swearing at that moment he’d been telepathic). Back to The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows to plumb the depths… Ambedo: a momentary trance of emotional clarity. The word was perfect to explain how he’d begun to use his work to keep the world weariness at bay for himself too.  In The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows, Ambedo is explained with some of these lines: “Sometimes when you’re alone and everything is quiet, you feel a certain placeless intensity that drifts like a fog.” The imagery is exquisite and I think of my friend working, throwing back light into the darkness of depression. The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows continues, later its states, “ How delicate and fleeting it all seems, everything struggling to exist. You feel a kind of melancholic trance sweeping over you. A rush of clarity, as if you’ve shaken yourself out of a dream. You are here. You are alive. You are in it.” It just struck me that watching him put the brush on the canvas was just that - Ambedo. He kept the world from making him weary by making, creating, bringing into existence something new to potentially outlast himself, and for him, producing satisfaction that keeps the dark demons in the shadows.  I began to understand his own creative force, not just my own… a revelation!

The danger of letting your world be weighted down by the weariness of existence is that the older you get, the harder it is to dive into the darkness of The Abyss and then find you’re way out again. Nietzsche  warned us about  the abyss and how it can stare back into you. It gets its claws into us at first with the aforementioned “world weariness,” but you can fight back. I’ve always found the creative impulse a certain balm from the injury of this innocence, whatever form this creative impulse takes, but let it heal you. The long sleep will come for us all, but don’t let it take away tat clarity of vision that making (in all it’s various forms) can give us and the peace that goes with it.