A life in six words

The film produced Sam Goldwyn, famous for his verbal gaffes, once told a questioner, ‘I will answer you in two words..Impossible!

My challenge involves six words.

Try, if you can, to distil the essence of your life into six words, just six. A recent book…’One Life, Six Words, What’s Yours...is composed of various attempts at that very thing, the result of a campaign by Smith, an online magazine.

In the introduction we are told “Six-word wonders were zipping across the Net - from laptops to Smith, from Twitter to cell phones, from writers to their blogs, from readers to one another. And before we knew it, submissions were coming in by the thousands.”

A nine-year old survivor of thyroid cancer wrote: “Cursed with cancer, blessed with friends”; a twenty-seven year-old, dumped by her boyfriends offered: “I still make coffee for two.”

Another disappointed in love contributed, ‘Never should have bought that ring”. The book includes suggestions from some well-known figures - Jonathan Dimbleby: ‘I believe in life before death”; Max Hastings: “Adventures, joys, love beyond my desserts” and Jeffrey Archer: “I do not intend to mellow”.

The origin of the book lies in an incident in the life of the novelist Ernest Hemingway. Challenged to produce a story in just six words, Hemingway came up with this: “For sale. Baby shoes. Never worn.”

All the agony of life is in those six words, that tell of dreams shattered and hopes quenched.

Certain Bible authors have their own six words: “Vanity of vanities, all is vanity”, was the theme of the author of Ecclesiastes; the message of Amos is likewise distilled into six words, “Let justice flow like a river”.

One man who features in the opening pages of the New Testament had his own ‘six words’. John the Baptist, who preaching had attracted the attention of all in authority in Jerusalem, soon found himself eclipsed by his cousin, Jesus of Nazareth. News came that Jesus was preaching, healing and baptising, and that “everyone is going to him” (John 3;26).

It was a supreme moment of testing, but John saw himself as the best man at a wedding, whose task it is to remain in the background while all the attention focuses on the bride and groom. John’s words show his greatness. Speaking of Jesus, he said: “He must increase, I must decrease”.

The struggle against self-will is one of the most difficult we have to fight. William Benson couldn’t manage it.

He caused a bust to be erected in Poet’s Corner at Westminster Abbey, and added this inscription: “In the year of Our Lord Christ, One thousand seven hundred and thirty-seven, this bust of the author of ‘Paradise Lost’ was placed here by William Benson, Esquire, one of the auditors of the Imprest to H.M. King George II, formerly surveyor of the works of H.M. George I.”

Not a mention of John Milton, but plenty about William Benson. He could have learned from John the Baptist’s six words!