Stand Still Like the Hummingbird

by Henry Miller

The Miraculous in Despair

"When you find you can go neither backward nor forward, when you discover that you are no longer able to stand, sit or lie down, when your children have died of malnutrition and your aged parents have been sent to the poorhouse or the gas chamber, when you realize that you can neither write nor not write, when you are convinced that all the exits are blocked, either you take to believing in miracles or you stand still like the hummingbird. The miracle is that the honey is always there, right under your nose, only you were too busy searching elsewhere to realize it. The worst is not death but being blind, blind to the fact that everything about life is in the nature of the miraculous. The language of society is conformity; the language of the creative individual is freedom. Life will continue to be a hell as long as the people who make up the world shut their eyes to reality."

Harmony with Life

"‘If we are in harmony with life,’ he discovers, ‘life will keep us alive.’ Or, as he puts it elsewhere, ‘The more we find ourselves—our individuality—the more we find God.’"

Acceptance of Suffering

"I mean that I have made my peace with suffering. Suffering belongs, just as much as laughter, joy, treachery or what have you. When one perceives its function, its value, its usefulness, one no longer dreads it, this endless suffering which all the world is so eager to dodge."

Metaphysical Stillness

"Any theory, any idea, any speculation can augment the zest for life so long as one does not make the mistake of thinking that he is getting somewhere. We are getting nowhere, because (metaphysically speaking) there is nowhere to go. We are already there, have been since eternity. All we need do is wake up to the fact."

Abundance of Life

"He found, by opening his eyes, that life provides everything necessary for man’s peace and enjoyment—one has only to make use of what is there, ready to hand, as it were. ‘Life is bountiful,’ he seems to be saying all the time. ‘Relax! Life is here, all about you, not there, not over the hill.’"

Thoreau's Legacy

"Thoreau himself has become a symbol. But he was only a man, let us not forget that. By making him a symbol, by raising memorials to him, we defeat the very purpose of his life. Only by living our own lives to the full can we honor his memory. We should not try to imitate him but to surpass him. Each one of us has a totally different life to lead. We should not strive to become like Thoreau, or even like Jesus Christ, but to become what we are in truth and in essence. That is the message of every great individual and the whole meaning of being an individual. To be anything less is to move nearer to nullity."

The Art of Storytelling

"A story, to achieve its full effect, must be told; there must be gestures, pauses, false starts, confusion, raveling and unraveling, entanglement and disentanglement. There ought to be a certain amount of self-consciousness and embarrassment followed by a complete forgetfulness of self, followed by ecstasy and abandon and delirium."

The Simplicity of Miracles

"The greatest miracle is the discovery that all is miraculous. And the nature of the miraculous is—utter simplicity."

The Inward Journey

"All is senseless repetition. ‘There am I, and there I always am,’ as Rimbaud said. Neither Lao-tzu, nor the Enlightened One, nor the Prince of Peace made any excursions into outer space, unless in their astral bodies. They changed worlds, yes. They traveled far. But standing still. Let us not forget that the road inward toward the source stretches as far and as deep as the road outward."