A Reminder On One Way To Survive Despair

 I was sorting through files looking for one thing and found another. This quote from Barbara Kingsolver is a favorite and worth sharing. I strive to follow this advice and look for joy and be hopeful. It's easiest in a garden. Hardest at the keyboard.

Excerpt from High Tide in Tucson

“Every one of us is called upon, probably many times, to start a new life. A frightening diagnosis, a marriage, a move, loss of a job or a limb or a loved one, a graduation, bringing a new baby home: it’s impossible to think at first how this all will be possible. Eventually, what moves it all forward is the subterranean ebb and flow of being alive among the living.

In my own worst seasons, I’ve come back from the colorless world of despair by forcing myself to look hard, for a long time at a single glorious thing: a flame of red geranium outside my bedroom window. And then another: my daughter in a yellow dress. And another: the perfect outline of a full, dark sphere behind the crescent moon. Until I learned to be in love with my life again. Like a stroke victim retraining new parts of the brain to grasp lost skills, I have taught myself joy, over and over again.

It’s not such a wide gulf to cross, then, from survival to poetry. We hold fast to the passions of endurance that buckle and creak beneath us, dovetailed, tight as a good wooden boat to carry us onward. And onward full tilt we go, pitched and wrecked and absurdly resolute, driven in spite of everything to make good on a new shore. To be hopeful, to embrace one possibility after another—that is surely the basic instinct. Baser even than hate, the thing with teeth, which can be stilled with a tone of voice or stunned by beauty. If the whole world of the living has to turn on the single point of remaining alive, that pointed endurance is the poetry of hope. The thing with feathers.”

Barbara Kingsolver from High Tide in Tucson, Essays from Now or Never

Review of “A Handful of Nothing” by Ken Gullette.

 

The author, Ken Gullette, gave me a copy of this book exactly one year ago. I’ve enjoyed reading it, all be it slowly, because this is a book that shouldn’t be rushed. It is an asset to be savored for its calming scenes and passages that require a bit of reflection.

What comes to my mind first are a few thoughts in chapter 80, page 183:

“The master continued, ‘Just like this stone, you are being shaped by the stream of life. … Seeking perfection is an endless pursuit. But striving to be a better person each day—that is a journey worth taking.

He placed the stone in the monk’s hand. ‘When you see a stone, let it remind you that perfection is not the goal. The true path lies in embracing your imperfections and transforming them through continuous growth. It is in the daily effort to be better, to spread kindness and truth, and to see the world as it is without judgment or supernatural delusions—that is where true wisdom is found.’”

For me, that was an instant reminder of a gemstone I purchased ages ago from a gem and mineral show. The original piece of transparent gemstone material would have been heavily marked with alternating colors, banding in blues and yellows, and with a shift in orientation. Not the kind of quality usually valued by the traditional jewelry trade. However, what was done by the crafts person, the lapidary, transformed that piece of flawed material and made it into a remarkable gem. The stone was cut to reveal a chevron-like pattern when held up to the light. Getting that pattern required the crafts person to use all their skill as the final stone was quite thin and would be difficult to mount into a piece of jewelry.

That gemstone is a constant reminder for me to look beyond the ordinary, the casual correctness of accepted standards, and to seek beauty in all its forms in the natural world and in human culture. Whether it is a leaf, a flower, a butterfly, or a man-made object, beauty is all around us if we pause long enough to notice.

That is from only one chapter among eighty-eight. It is for each reader find their own gems within this meditative book as they pursue their journey.