“This is the real human predicament. This universe is only to be tolerated, it’s not to be solved.” Lessons From Leonard Cohen

A Manual For Living With Defeat

Lessons From Leonard Cohen – A Manual For Living With Defeat is a compendium of Leonard Cohen’s observations that offer insight into living in this imperfect world. For links to all posts in this series and information about how they differ from other collections of so-called lessons from Leonard Cohen, see Lessons From Leonard Cohen – Introduction.

Lesson #6: “This is the real human predicament. This universe is only to be tolerated, it’s not to be solved.”

Everybody would like an apocalyptic solution to the predicament of their lives, but the apocalyptic solution doesn’t come, and we’re left with daily events that are much more complex than an apocalypse.1 

Leonard Cohen

 

 

I am not a prophet, and I’m not trying to come up with solutions. I do not believe that there are any solutions to this life and this world. It is impossible to achieve a perfect world.2

Leonard Cohen

 

 

I think that this world is not a realm that admits to a solution. That isn’t what this world is about. It’s a different kind of activity that we have here. We have to deal with good and evil continually. With joy and despair, with all the antinomies, all the opposites and contraries. That’s what our life is about. We can’t abdicate that. I, myself, am not attracted to the easy solution, the dogmatic solution. I think that when you have large numbers of people attracted to the dogmatic solution, you get a very static, solid kind of society that is quite unpleasant to live in. That’s why I like our society. Nobody can quite dominate it.3

Leonard Cohen

 

This is the real human predicament. This universe is only to be tolerated, it’s not to be solved.4

Leonard Cohen

 

Leonard Cohen’s Resolution Of The Irresolvable

Central to Leonard Cohen’s work is the notion that not only is life imperfect but also “this realm does not admit to resolution.” His solution is to surrender the illusion that we can decipher, let alone solve the human predicament, so that, instead, we can “stand before the Lord of Song” to say “Hallelujah.”5

 

The only moment that you can live here comfortably in these absolutely irreconcilable conflicts is in this moment when you embrace it all and you say ‘Look, I don’t understand a fucking thing at all – Hallelujah!’

Lessons From Leonard Cohen

All published posts in this series can be found at

Lessons From Leonard Cohen
A Manual For Living With Defeat

I am republishing selected posts from my former Leonard Cohen site, Cohencentric, here on AllanShowalter.com (these posts can be found at Leonard Cohen). This entry was originally posted on May 8, 2018.
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  1. Leonard Cohen interviewed by Hans Pfitzinger in Paris, 1988 []
  2. Village Idiot Leonard by Majse Njor (Gaffa: Nov 1992) [via Google Translate] []
  3. Songs and Thoughts of Leonard Cohen by Robert O’Brian (RockBill, September 1987). []
  4. Interview / Leonard Cohen By Alan Twigg. Essay Date: 1979, 1984, 1985. ABC Bookworld []
  5. How The Heart Approaches What It Yearns by John McKenna. RTE: May 9 & 12, 1988; Accessed at LeonardCohenFiles. Photo by Antonio Olmos. []

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