Be in love with your life–Jack Kerouac

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“Be in love with your life. Every minute of it.” — there is a certain intensity to this proposition that is hard to keep up with. Yet I like the challenge–the notion of living positively, moment to moment.  It fits with the season–for those of us who feel an inclination to reflect on life in 2016.

The quote is emblazoned on a journal I received as a gift for Christmas–shown above. It is attributed to Jack Kerouac, but I have not found the source.  There is a clue though in Kerouac’s 30-point  Belief and Technique for Modern Prose:  point #4 is ‘Be in love with yr life’. (‘yr’ is how he wrote it).  Two more of the 30 points are:

5. Something that you feel will find its own form

and

13.Remove literary, grammatical and syntactical inhibition

All 30 points demonstrate how to write in a spontaneous, connected way (please follow the link above for the full list).

Jack Kerouac is well-known for his novel, On the Road, which was made into a movie. This line from his book seems to capture the energy of  ‘Be in love with your life every minute of it’:

The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn, like fabulous yellow Roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars, and in the middle, you see the blue center-light pop, and everybody goes ahh…

Jack Kerouac lived 47 years, from 1922 to  1969, a relatively short but intensely creative life.  I hope you have enjoyed this Jack Kerouac excursion–I certainly did. Most known for his novels, he was also a poet and a major contributor to the American English form of haiku, one of my new interests.  He is considered to be a pioneer of the ‘Beat’ generation and recognized for his method of spontaneous prose.

Now I have explored my journal cover quote, I wonder if I will be able to live up to it when I write within….