Maurice Sendak: on Death, Life, and Speaking Truth to Children

Originally posted in May 2012. Click here for a printer-friendly version of this blog post.

Maurice Sendak: on Death, Life, and Speaking Truth to Children

Maurice Sendak, the children's writer and illustrator who authored Where the Wild Things Are (1963), died on May 8th 2012 at the age of 83. In the flurry of tributes posted online in the wake of his passing I stumbled upon a clip entitled Sendak On Death (And Life), from Spike Jonze's documentary, Tell Them Anything You Want: A Maurice Sendak Documentary (2009). The title intrigued me.
I am a firm believer in the notion that the thoughts and feelings of a man approaching death are worthy of consideration. It doesn't matter whether you agree with his beliefs, his philosophy, or his life choices. Man, when faced with his own mortality, can often apprehend reality with a clarity that the rest of us cannot.
Here is the clip, followed by a transcript of the part which deals with the topics in the title of this post.

I did some very good books, which mostly is an isolationist form of life - doing books, doing pictures - and is the only true happiness I've ever, ever enjoyed in my life. It's sublime! To just to go into another room and make pictures. It's magic time, where all your weaknesses of character and all blemishes of personality and whatever else torments you, fades away. It just doesn't matter. 

You're doing the one thing you want to do and you do it well and you know you do it well ...

... and you're happy!

The whole promise is to do the work. Sitting down at the drawing table, turning on the radio. I think, "What a transcendent life this is!" that I'm doing everything I want to do. 

And at that moment I feel that I'm a lucky man. 

I'm trying very hard to concentrate on what is here - what I can see, what I can smell, what I can feel - making that the important business of life. Just looking out the window and the colors that I see, reading Charles Dickens at night for an hour - little rituals I have - I'm listening to Mozart. 

I'm learning how not to take myself so seriously. That what I'm working on, what I'd like to work on - that it's not earthshakingly important anymore. I'm not earthshakingly important. 

So, what am I saying? ... I'm just clearing the decks for a simple death. 

You're done with your work. 

You're done with your life. 

And your life was your work. 

I think what I've offered was different. But not because I drew better than anybody or wrote better than anybody, but because I was more honest than anybody. And in the discussion of children and the lives of children and the fantasies of children and the language of children - I said anything I wanted. 

Because I don't believe in children, 

I don't believe in childhood, 

I don't believe that this demarcation - like, "You mustn't tell them that!" "You must tell them that!" - you tell them anything you want. Just tell them if it's true. 

If it's true, you tell them.

I have adult thoughts in my head - experiences - but I'm never going to talk about them, 

I'm never going to write about them. 

Why is my needle stuck in childhood? 

I don't know why. 

I don't know why. 

I guess that's where my heart is.

Several points in this excerpt resonated with me. 
First of all, I have found my life's calling - not as a children's author, but as a high school teacher, which is not entirely unrelated. Like Sendak, I am extremely grateful that my life's work brings me daily happiness, and enables me to live "a transcendent life." I am also grateful that my passion is in an enterprise that actually has real meaning and benefit. 
Secondly, I am slowly learning not to take myself so seriously, and the fact that I work with teenagers definitely helps with that. That, combined with the wisdom and maturity that comes from life experience and with age.
Lastly is the fact that I, too, am frustrated by society's insistence on restricting children's pursuit of truth based solely on fact that they are in the category of "children." I don't know if I would go so far as Sendak to say "I don't believe in children," but I definitely think that students suffer from being addressed by teachers as children. If we want children to think and act maturely as adults, then we need to start treating them that way - at least by the time they reach high school. 
Unlike so many of my fellow Jews, I believe that only get one life, and I thank God that this is the one I have been given.