Often, our lives are full of the serious, the important, the urgent and so on, with little room for daydreaming, boredom, just ‘doing nothing’ time and most importantly what is termed by the serious who are fearful of it…doing or reading or making ‘nonsense’.
For those who know of him, Edward Lear wrote a book in 1846 entitled ‘The Book Of Nonsense’ and a great song that I loved hearing as a kind ‘The Owl and the Pussycat’ which was the inspiration for today’s ink drawing.
The whole book is full of, well, nonsense. It’s great as it allows our imagination to roam, it frees us of the restrictions of the serious world, it keeps us from being ‘grown-ups’.
Getting old happens in terms of age, growing up is optional. As is embracing nonsense and keeping away from serious, it’s a choice we can all make.
At the end of our journeys, very few will cherish all the moments of being serious, following the rules, staying within the lines and being too scared to let go.
After all, most things that challenge the status quo and change the world are written off as nonsense by society and those who have the most to fear.
I’ll leave you with the brilliant Edward Lear’s first verse of The Jumblies:
They went to sea in a Sieve, they did,
In a Sieve they went to sea:
In spite of all their friends could say,
On a winter’s morn, on a stormy day,
In a Sieve they went to sea!
And when the Sieve turned round and round,
And every one cried, ‘You’ll all be drowned!’
The called aloud, ‘Our Sieve ain’t big,
But we don’t care a button! we don’t care a fig!
In a Seive we’ll go to sea!’
Far and few, far and few,
Are the lands where the Jumblies live;
Their heads are green, and their hands are blue,
And they went to sea in a Sieve.
