For most of my life, my favorite movie was Lawrence of Arabia. The other day, I started reading Lawrence’s autobiography, Seven Pillars of Wisdom. I immediately found the writing style compelling, despite all of Lawrence’s various prejudices, his self-absorption and his pride. I did not find much for pearls of wisdom in the opening chapters, but I did find this one gem of a quote:
“All men dream, but nor equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake in the day to find that it was vanity; but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act their dream with open eyes, to make it possible.”
By his own account, Lawrence dared to dream in the day. He dreamed of an Arab revolution and Arab self-determination, but he rued the fact that his limited success lead only to condemnation from those he had served under. “I meant to make a new nation, to restore! a lost influence, to give twenty millions of Semites the foundations on which to build an inspired dream-palace of their national thoughts. So high an aim called out the inherent nobility of their minds, and made them play a generous part in events: but when we won, it was charged against me that the British petrol royalties in Mesopotamia were become dubious, and French Colonial policy ruined in the Levant.”
Ultimately, as depicted in the film, Lawrence saw his dream, at the moment of realization, dissolved back to a familiar status quo.
“In these pages the history is not of the Arab movement, but of me in it. It is a narrative of daily life, mean happenings, little people. Here are no lessons for the world, no disclosures to shock peoples. It is filled with trivial things, partly that no one mistake for history the bones from which some day a man may make history, and partly for the pleasure it gave me to recall the fellowship of the revolt. We were fond together, because of the sweep of the open places, the taste of wide winds, the sunlight, and the hopes in which we worked. The moral freshness of the world-to-be intoxicated us. We were wrought up in ideas inexpressible and vaporous, but to be fought for. We lived many lives in those whirling campaigns, never sparing ourselves: yet when we achieved and the new world dawned, the old men came out again and took our victory to re-make in the likeness of the former world they knew. Youth could win, but had not learned to keep: and was pitiably weak against age. We stammered that we had worked for a new heaven and a new earth, and they thanked us kindly and made their peace.”
Nonetheless, I find all of this reminiscent another quote I have long loved, from the writings of Aleister Crowley. “None are truly happy, except for those who have desired the unattainable.”