“Don’t Try”: Charles Bukowski’s Philosophy on Life and Art. Here’s What It Means.

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“Don’t try.” It’s written on Charles Bukowski’s headstone, and was his philosophy on both life and art. But it doesn’t mean to give up and quit. In fact, quite the opposite.

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Transcription:

Charles Bukowski is known for having written in a frank, easy to understand fashion. But one simple line: “Don’t try,” which appears on his headstone, continues to baffle many a reader or casual observer.

What does it mean? Give up? Be slothful and forgo your dreams? Was it a dying message of ultimate regret?

Not at all.

As his widow, Linda Lee Bukowski, explained, in an interview with musician Mike Watt, he was asked to give his life advice for the resource book Who’s Who in America. That was his answer.

Her take? If you’re spending your time trying to do something, you’re not doing it.

Bukowski explained it himself in a letter, writing, “Somebody asked me, ‘What do you do? How do you create?’ ‘You don’t,’ I told them. ‘You don’t try. That’s very important, not to try; either for Cadillacs, creation, or immortality. You wait. And if nothing happens, you wait some more.’

“‘It’s like a bug, high on the wall. When it gets close to you, you reach out, slap out and kill it. Or, if you like its looks, you make a pet out of it.'”

In another letter, he writes, “We work too hard. We try too hard. Don’t try. Don’t work. It’s there. It’s been looking right at us, aching to kick out of the closed womb.”

So don’t try. Just feel, be, and do. It’s already in you, waiting to be set free.