The matt that could have been...

Meriweather Lewis (of Lewis and Clark) wrote the following while staying at the Shoshone camp on his 31st birthday. The Corps of Discovery was about to cross the Continental Divide.

“I reflected that I had as yet done but little, very little indeed, to further the happiness of the human race, or to advance the many hours I have spent in indolence, and now soarly feel the want of that information which those hours would have given me had they been judiciously expended.” [copied verbatim]

Four years later in October of 1809 he would be dead by his own hand in a Tennessee inn. He never publishes the expedition’s journals despite early promises to get them out quickly and pleading from President Jefferson and a worldwide audience to see them. Upon returning Jefferson appoints him governor of Louisiana but Lewis doesn’t even attend to those duties till the secretary of the territory begs him to attend to them.

Reading the history and excerpts from the journals in Undaunted Courage I was struck by how much I was reminded of myself. Like Lewis I have a great curiosity about the world around me and am happiest with a small group in the middle of nowhere. Once Lewis returns from the expedition he fails again and again to measure up to people’s expectations and leaves a wake of unfinished projects behind him. He never married despite courting attempts and this seemed to be a great burden on him. He died alone feeling like he’d let his friends down.

I was reminded of so many of my own 80% finished projects. It’s painful at times reading the correspondence to him where someone like Jefferson really needs him to get something done but can’t find the right words to motivate him. For his own part, Lewis seems to feel horrible at not finding the energy to finish these things that others need of him.

As I close in on my 30th birthday I have the same thoughts on my mind that Lewis wrote of, and the same inability to deliver on the promises I make. Yet without the great accomplishments Lewis had already made by that same age. Listening: It Could Have Been A Brilliant Career - Belle & Sebastian