How sad for Phileas Fogg for missing so much beauty!
How sad for Phileas Fogg for missing so much beauty!
The main character in Jules Verne’s classic tale “Around the World in Eighty Days” is described in the heading of Chapter 14 as one about to descend “the whole length of the beautiful valley of the Ganges without ever thinking of seeing it.” Verne describes this “beautiful valley” in detail.
The railway, on leaving Benares, passed for a while along the valley of the Ganges. Through the windows of their carriage the travelers had glimpses of the diversified landscape of Bahar, with its mountains clothed in verdure, its fields of barley, wheat, and corn, its jungles with green alligators, its neat villages and its still thickly-leaved forests.*
All that beauty was lost on Phileas Fogg. And for what? For his resolve to win a bet by circumnavigating the globe in eighty days. In this specific instance, he missed it for his resolve to get from Bombay to Calcutta. To use modern terms, Fogg was an admirable “man on a mission” who was “focused” and “purpose-driven” and who “ferociously resisted ‘mission-creep.” Unfortunately, he was so bound to these laudable ideas that he remained totally oblivious to the soul-lifting beauty that surrounded him.
Oh, how we resemble Phileas Fogg! Like him, we often rush tither and yon with our grand purposes and plans and miss the aesthetic beauty laid before us. We are enraptured with our mission – whether it be as mundane as picking up a jar of mayonnaise or as profound as flying to see an ailing parent before they draw their last breath. In the name of purposeful, culturally-laudable, highly-efficient, mission-minded haste, we pass by countless permutations of “the whole length of the beautiful valley of the Ganges without ever thinking of seeing it.”
How sad for us for missing so much beauty!
It need not be that way, my friends. We can indeed “get things done” and enjoy the subtle surprise of beauty The Master Artisan lays before us each day. Both are possible and necessary for a thriving soul. And need not wait for something majestic (e.g., a blazing sunset or the once-in-a-lifetime visit to the Grand Canyon). We may be moved by beauty conveyed in the shadow of a single dancing leaf, the curve of a freshly-mown lawn, the slicing contrast of winter-bare branches, or the faint wisps of white cloud in an otherwise perfectly blue sky.
Poor Phileas Fogg has been trapped in Chapter 14 as a beauty-missing fellow since 1874 – the year Jules Vern published Around the World in Eighty Days. I say it’s time we set him free. We can do that by finding him in our own hearts and warmly inviting him, “Come, my dear Phileas Fogg, and look at this beauty!” We may need to reassure him (I mean, ourselves) that such beauty-mindedness will not destroy the purpose-driven, mission-minded life we cherish. In fact, we may calm him by explaining how enjoying beauty on the journey actually lightens our hearts and makes us joyfully productive.
Then, on the breeze of a kind providence, poor Phileas Fogg may just come and sit down with us at the carriage window. Then we can together “travel the whole length of the beautiful valley of the Ganges” and marvel for seeing it.
*Jules Verne, Around the World in Eighty Days, Palazzo Editions, Ltd, United Kingdom, 2012, pp. 85-86.
Book cover art by Robert Igpen