DON’T TRY
Charles Bukowski was a twentieth-century American writer and poet, known for his unfiltered potent and often crude takes on life. At 50 years old on the tail end of the traditional career timeline, Bukowski got his first real shot and he took it. After that, it would seem to many that it began and he would soon become increasingly successful and famous in the literary world and culture at large — not long after it took Bukowski years and years of writing and toiling, and trying to finally have circumstances work out in his favor so he could gain traction and find success as a writer. To get what he wanted since he was a teenager and fulfill what he believed his life was for.
It is at least initially perplexing that his gravestone reads right now
“DON’T TRY” — a message that seems rather grim especially for a gravestone as well as counterintuitive to a story. How could a man who became successful in fulfilling his idea of himself? A man who although it took a while found immense respect and recognition for his craft all because of his relentless trying? How could this man leave the words don’t try as his final offering?
Arguably perhaps this is where the most important idea can be found — not only in Bukowski’s work but in Bukowski’s life. In a letter to William Packard, a publisher friend and fellow writer, Bukowski wrote to many
Writers write for the wrong reasons. They want to get famous or they want to get rich or they want to get laid by the girls with the bluebells in their hair. When everything works best it’s not because you chose writing but because writing chose you. It’s when you’re mad with it, when it’s stuffed in your ears nostrils under your fingernails.
It’s when there’s no hope.
In this letter, Bukowski is referring to aspiring writers — but he’s arguably referring to something much larger the notion of purpose and success and creative endeavors in general.
When you were very young and someone asked you for the first time what your favorite color was and you decided that it was blue or red or whatever else. Perhaps it felt like a choice but it wasn’t really. No one chooses how colors make them feel and why some seem to paint under the brain with better feelings than others. We can describe the reasons why we like the colors we like but we can’t choose why we do. The color sort of chooses us.
In a relatively low stakes situation like our favorite color, it’s easy to just realize which one feels best and declare without trying how one defines their purpose and carries out the bulk of their life. However, it is not so easy nor so low stakes making it inevitably more complicated, convoluted and challenging. Although perhaps it is at its core somewhat the same as knowing your favorite color and the same letter to Packard Bukowski went on to say,
We work too hard, we try too hard.
Don’t try, don’t work. It’s — they’re looking right at us taking the kick out of the closed room
In this Bukowski alludes to the idea that — if you have to try, if you have to try to care about something or have to try to want something, perhaps you don’t care about it & perhaps you don’t want it, perhaps it isn’t your favorite color throughout his life.
Bukowski didn’t try to be something that he wasn’t. He tried to be a writer but he didn’t try to want to be a writer nor did he try to write how he wanted to write. He just did it and kept on doing it.
We seem to often perform at our best when we are ourselves natural and honest, attending to who we really are and what we really want to say or do, without the addition of ulterior motives without forcing it or overthinking too much.
TRY
None of this is to suggest that something is hard and complicated, like purpose and passion, and desire and success as easy or prescribed. Because it isn’t. It’s all is unclear and complicated as the very brain that contrives the whole system and it’s not as if writing or filmmaking or painting or making music or business or whatever else must come easy to the writer or filmmaker or painter or musician etc, and order for it to be the right thing or for them to be great at it.
But it is likely, however, that at the pain and endurance of working through the process does not feel worth it and you are not compelled to do it even in the face of rejection or hardship or sacrifice then perhaps it is here where Bukowski might say — “Don’t try!”
But, if it does,
If the thought of not doing the thing hurts more than the thought of potentially suffering through the process,
if the thought of a life without it or never having tried it at all terrifies you,
If it comes to you, threw you out of you almost as if you’re not trying,
perhaps Bukowski might say here TRY,
And if you’re going to try GO ALL THE WAY.
