“Francois Rabelais. He was a poet. And his last words were, ‘I go to seek a Great Perhaps.’ That’s why I’m going. So I don’t have to wait until I die to start seeking a Great Perhaps.”
Like any 15-year-old reading Looking For Alaska, I was fascinated by the labyrinth and last words and the concept of a Great Perhaps. Rabelais’ last words found their way to my first Instagram bio. Great Perhaps. Those two words resonate strongly with you, making you imagine that something genuinely exceptional is to be sought. They make you dream of an epiphany of the sort that Murakami had while watching a baseball game. And so you trudge through life, waiting for a magical day when everything will change. You watch your drizzle from behind a closed window while waiting for a hurricane to overturn everything.
But very likely, the epiphany never happens. And maybe we’re not one huge decision away from a Great Perhaps; we’re just hundreds of tiny choices away. Very likely, we aren’t exceptional. We’re all just like everyone else in some ways and different in some ways. It’s a very anticlimactic realization. That this is life—the mundane. You can’t wait for “that one big thing” to happen and change everything. Like those self-help authors say, maybe you do have to find freedom in discipline. Maybe you never discover a calling you love doing 24×7; maybe you must always keep at things you don’t particularly enjoy doing. Maybe you’re supposed to have it planned and not make impulsive decisions in search of spectacularism.
Perhaps, the Great Perhaps is made up of insignificant possibilities.
~👻
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