Throw Yourself Like Seed

Vincent Van Gogh

Throw Yourself Like Seed

Shake off this sadness, and recover your spirit;
sluggish you will never see the wheel of fate
that brushes your heel as it turns going by,
the man who wants to live is the man in whom life is abundant.

Now you are only giving food to that final pain
which is slowly winding you in the nets of death,
but to live is to work, and the only thing which lasts
is the work; start then, turn to the work.

Throw yourself like seed as you walk, and into your own field,
don’t turn your face for that would be to turn it to death,
and do not let the past weigh down your motion.

Leave what’s alive in the furrow, what’s dead in yourself,
for life does not move in the same way as a group of clouds;
from your work you will be able one day to gather yourself.

Miguel de Unamuno
Translated by Robert Bly

Only a certain amount of introspection and inward looking is beneficial. After a point it becomes as the poet says, “giving food to that final pain”, it becomes a trap, a “net”, a paralyzing agent. Here the poet calls us to move, to give, to shake off our sluggishness – to be fully alive is to openly embrace the work of living. “Throw yourself like a seed as you walk”, isn’t that the way they used to plant fields of grain? Imagine if walking though life you throw your energy and personality and imagination and love into the world around you, like the man in the painting scattering the seed onto the ground. The line, “Leave what’s alive in the furrow, what’s dead in yourself” gives me pause. What is that he’s saying? Does he mean give it all? Don’t be careful to hold something in reserve, because what you give multiplies and expands? What an amazing thought.