Go Lightly: Advice from Aldous Huxley
- Marlane Ainsworth
- 1 hour ago
- 2 min read
Gentle, timely advice
Are you feeling heavy? Despondent? Uptight? Worried?
I just read some advice from the dead English writer and philosopher Aldous Huxley which I think might help you, because it helped me.
In his 1962 novel Island he wrote:
Learn to do everything lightly . . . Just lightly let things happen and lightly cope with them.
Doing things lightly implies there’s no physical or mental baggage weighing me down or draining my energy.
I recall time spent in airport terminals watching frowning people trundle past dragging suitcases so huge and heavy that the wheels squeak in protest, while every now and then a traveller whizzes across my line of vision with long strides, a fanny pack and a smile.
As a traveller through life, who would I rather be?
The one with the fanny pack and smile.
Go lightly, Marlane. Go lightly.
Do the housework lightly. Browse for possible publishers lightly. Walk shopping aisles lightly. Scatter random acts of kindness lightly. Speak to my daily companion lightly.
Just writing these words makes my body relax and my mind cease its burdensome chatter.
Going lightly and lightly coping with unexpected, uncomfortable or frustrating things that happen mean I do less damage to people and things.
Going lightly and lightly coping automatically let light in.
The more heavily the world goes, the more lightly I will go.
It’s as if I’m bouncing along on a pogo stick instead of leaning on a walking stick. I’m the spontaneous, innocent Fool in a Tarot deck. An adult Peter Pan. Nothing is too hard. I’m as free as a bird in full, fast flight. A white puff of cloud, the whole sky my playground.
Aldous Huxley also wrote in “A Philosopher’s Visionary Prediction”, published a month before his death in 1963:
We must learn how to be mentally silent, we must cultivate the art of pure receptivity . . .
Be mentally silent.
Be pure receptivity.
Go lightly, my friend. Go lightly.
With love, Marlane
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