“Happiness cannot be traveled to, owned, earned, worn or
consumed. Happiness is the spiritual experience of living every minute with
love, grace, and gratitude.”
—Denis Waitley
I enjoy Beatrix Potter’s children’s tales with their
detailed and charming illustrations, but after reading a biography of her a few
years ago (Linda Lear’s excellent Beatrix Potter: A Life in Nature, see links below), my
respect and admiration for her grew until she became one of my heroes. In honor
of her birthday yesterday, I want to share with you a little of what could be
called “The Tale of Beatrix Potter.”
Once upon a time...Helen Beatrix Potter was born 150 years ago on July 28, 1866
in London. She was educated at home by governesses, as was the custom for girls
of her social class. She and her younger brother, Bertram, kept a number of
pets in the schoolroom, including rabbits, a hedgehog, mice, and bats. She
observed these pets closely, sketched them, and wrote stories about them.
During family holidays in Scotland and the English Lake District, she explored
freely, spending hours observing and sketching what she saw. From 1881 to 1897
she kept a journal (in a code that wasn’t cracked until 1958) where she wrote
down her observations.
She loved the study of natural history: archaeology,
geology, entomology, and especially mycology, the study of fungi. Scottish
Naturalist Charles McIntosh encouraged her to make her fungi drawings more
technically accurate, and her studies resulted in a scientific paper on how
fungi spores reproduce. Fungi expert George Massee delivered that paper on her
behalf at a meeting of the Linnean Society, where women couldn’t even attend
the meetings, let alone read papers. (Though I’m not enamored of mushrooms
myself, I always think of her when an interesting one pops up in my yard.)
Her earliest published works included greeting card
designs and illustrations for the publisher Hildesheimer & Faulkner. Her
work on other people’s stories made her long to publish her own, so she adapted
one of her earliest stories she’d created for a picture letter sent to the son
of one of her old governesses. In 1901, Beatrix published The Tale of Peter
Rabbit herself after several publishers turned her down. After seeing the
success of the book, in 1902, the publishing firm of Frederick Warne & Co.
decided they would publish it after all, if Beatrix would redo her black and
white illustrations in color. After that, she wrote two or three little books a
year, until 1930 when the last one, The Tale of Little Pig Robinson,
came out.
Beatrix was also a smart marketer, and created the first licensed literary character, a Peter Rabbit doll. She invented other toys, a Peter Rabbit game, and painting books for Peter Rabbit and Jemima Puddle-Duck.
In 1905, Beatrix became engaged to her editor, Norman Warne,
but sadly he died of leukemia before they could be married.
After Norman’s death, Beatrix used income from her books and
a small inheritance to buy Hill Top Farm in Near Sawrey in the Lake District.
Hill Top became a sanctuary for her, and she wrote and painted some of her most
popular tales there, including The Tale of Tom Kitten and The Tale of
Jemima Puddle-Duck. If I ever get back to England, I’d love to visit Hill Top Farm, which is part of the National Trust and open to visitors.
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| Potter and Heelis on their wedding day |
In 1909, she bought Castle Farm, the property across the
road from Hill Top. Beatrix wanted to preserve the Lake District from
development, and this was one practical way to do that. During this time, she
met solicitor William Heelis who helped her with her property purchases. They
married in 1913, when Beatrix was 47, and moved to Castle Cottage on Castle
Farm. Happily married for 30 years, the Heelises were deeply involved in the
community. In addition to her writing and art, Beatrix grew fascinated with
raising Herdwick sheep, becoming a respected breeder and winning prizes at
local shows. When she died in 1943, she left 15 farms and more than 4,000 acres
to the National Trust.
Beatrix Potter’s work and life inspire me. I’m amazed by
what she was able to accomplish at a time when not many options were open to
women. I hope you’ve enjoyed learning about this remarkable woman, and that you’ll
check out some of the links below.
Do you have a favorite Beatrix Potter story?
“I have just made
stories to please myself, because I never grew up.”
—Beatrix Potter
More Fun Stuff:
Many Beatrix Potter stories are available on Project Gutenberg.
Miss Potter (fictionalized movie version of her life)
Introduction by Ted Kooser: Faced by a loss, and perhaps by a loss of words, many of us find something to do with our hands. Here's a poem about just that by Arden Levine, published in 2015 in an issue of Agni Magazine. Ms. Levine lives in New York.
Offering
She tells him she's leaving him and he
bakes a pie. His pies are exquisite,
their crusts like crinoline.
He doesn't change clothes, works
in slacks, shirtsleeves rolled.
Summer makes the kitchen unbearable
But he suffers beautifully, tenderly
cuts the strawberries, pours
into the deep curve of the bowl.
She hadn't missed his hands since
last they drew her to his body.
Now she watches them stroke the edges
of the dough, shape it like cooling glass.
When the oven opens, his brow drips,
he brings his hands to his face.
American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry
Foundation (www.poetryfoundation.org), publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also
supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln.
Poem copyright ©2015 by Arden Levine, “Offering,” (AGNI Magazine, 2015). Poem
reprinted by permission of Arden Levine and the publisher. Introduction
copyright ©2016 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction’s author, Ted Kooser,
served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of
Congress from 2004-2006. We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts.
Welcome to summer reruns! About once a month, I’ll be sharing a post from the archives. I hope you enjoy this one, from 2011.
 |
| Photo courtesy D. Sharon Pruitt, Pink Sherbet Photography |
Comparisons. I can be feeling perfectly fine about myself and suddenly crash and burn because I started comparing myself to someone else…my neighbor, a fellow freelancer, a friend, even my husband! I look at my personality and accomplishments and feel inferior. How does she achieve so much in the same time I have? It sure looks like he is having a great time while I’m over here tongue-tied and sweating. You get the picture.
This is where my shaky self-esteem reveals itself. I tend to denigrate what I’ve done—“Oh, it’s not that hard to do such-and-such (because if I’m able to do it, anyone can)”—or compare what I perceive to be my weakness with someone else’s strength.
Comparisons in which I come out ahead can be dangerous, too. I become less empathetic—because, once again, if I can do it, anyone can! It’s easy to become critical of others when you “compare down.”
Guilt. I must have some sort of overactive guilt gene, because I fight guilt feelings all the time. Even when I’m occupied in something “productive” I find myself feeling guilty about not doing something else that’s productive. Crazy, huh? And the guilt alarm bells really go off when I do something just for me, which I do quite frequently despite the guilt. I may do whatever-it-is, but the guilty feelings shadow my happiness. It’s far too easy to let guilt become too large a part of the emotional landscape.
“What people think.” How many times do we do things—or avoid doing them—because of what other people think? Women especially have a hard time with this because we’re often raised to be people-pleasers. We want to be liked and we want to fit in. That’s not bad unless it causes us to give up essential dreams and parts of ourselves to do so.
I wish I could say I’ve conquered these happiness busters, but I’m still working on it. At least I’ve learned to recognize when they appear, and sometimes I even manage to banish them. It helps when I remember my belief that we’re basically all doing the best we can. Sure, we fail and make mistakes, but we’re human. At times, failures and mistakes are the best we can do while we stretch outside our comfort zones.
What are some of your happiness busters? How do you handle them?
“Make treating yourself a priority and always remember
your life is happening now. Don't put off all your dreams and pleasures to
another day. In any balanced personal definition of success there has to be a
powerful element of living life in the present.”
—Mireille Guiliano
“Sometimes letting
things go is an act of far greater power than defending or hanging on.”—Eckert
Tolle
I’ve done it a thousand times, but this time something went
wrong. I was bringing Tank out of his paddock to go up to the barn, when another
horse squeezed between us, pulling Tank’s lead rope tight. In response to the
pressure, Tank pulled back, jerking the lead rope out of my hand. Because I
didn’t have the good sense to drop the rope when I first felt a tug, the result
was a severe rope burn on the palm and middle finger of my left hand. I spent
the remainder of my time at the barn with my hand wrapped around an icy water
bottle, and the rest of the week healing.
While this was an instance of literally needing to
let go, it reminded me that there are plenty of attitudes, expectations, fears,
worries, opinions, burdens, and limitations we—I —should let go of. We’re often
taught about the importance of persevering—not so often about letting go.
I’m now of an age where letting go is taking center stage.
My son is grown and my role in the family is changing. I’m becoming less
interested in what others think of me, so I’m reevaluating what I do and how I
do it. I’m setting aside certain desires and dreams to make room for new ones.
None of this is easy, and it starts with letting go.
As you might have guessed, letting go does not come naturally to me. I’m more inclined to cling, to fight change, to stay rigid. What am I so
afraid of? Pain? Discomfort? Chaos? Pain, discomfort, and chaos are part of
life. Holding tight to that lead rope reminded me that holding on doesn’t
protect me from pain. Sometimes it causes it. And here’s the thing about
letting go:
It reduces the pain. If I’d dropped the rope as soon
as I felt Tank pull against it, I wouldn’t have gotten hurt. I don’t know why I
was hanging on so hard—there was no real reason for it. Sometimes we hang on so
hard, and for what?
It allows us to regroup and move on. Tank trotted off
only a couple of strides and the other horses did nothing but sniff noses or
flick an ear in his direction. I was easily able to collect him and resume our
walk up to the barn. Sometimes it’s only when we’ve let go that we see the way
out of our difficulty, or the excellent alternative to what we were clinging to
in the first place.
If we’re in a situation where we’re clinging hard to a
person, belief, or outcome, and we’re miserable and frustrated much of the
time, perhaps it’s time to at least consider letting go. Take a few minutes,
close our eyes, imagine what it would be like to let go. Do we feel relief?
Panic? Deep sorrow? Visualizing letting go might offer us the breathing room we
need to see a better option for moving forward. If our attitudes and
expectations rob us of happiness, we should let them go. If we’ve tied our
happiness to a particular outcome that we just can’t seem to produce, it might
be time to let that go, too.
In a case of perfect timing, yesterday, our yoga teacher,
Tina, finished the class by reading us the following poem as we lay in final
relaxation pose:
She Let Go
She let go. Without a thought or a word, she let go.
She let go of the fear. She let go of the judgments. She let
go of the confluence of opinions swarming around her head. She let go of the
committee of indecision within her. She let go of all the “right” reasons.
Wholly and completely, without hesitation or worry, she just let go.
She didn’t ask anyone for advice. She didn’t read a book on
how to let go. She didn’t search the scriptures. She just let go. She let go of
all the memories that held her back. She let go of all the anxiety that kept
her from moving forward. She let go of the planning and all of the calculations
about how to do it just right.
She didn’t promise to let go. She didn’t journal about it.
She didn’t write the projected date in her Day-Timer. She made no public
announcement and put no ad in the paper. She didn’t check the weather report or
read her daily horoscope. She just let go.
She didn’t analyze whether she should let go. She didn’t
call her friends to discuss the matter. She didn’t do a five-step Spiritual
Mind Treatment. She didn’t call the prayer line. She didn’t utter one word. She
just let go.
No one was around when it happened. There was no applause or
congratulations. No one thanked her or praised her. No one noticed a thing. Like
a leaf falling from a tree, she just let go.
There was no effort. There was no struggle. It wasn’t good
and it wasn’t bad. It was what it was, and it is just that.
In the space of letting go, she let it all be. A small smile
came over her face. A light breeze blew through her. And the sun and the moon
shone forevermore.
—Rev. Safire Rose
What are you clinging to? Is it time to let go?
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| Photo courtesy Maurice Muller |
Introduction by Ted Kooser: We hope that you will
visit, from time to time, our archived columns at www.americanlifeinpoetry.org,
where you may find other poems by the poets we feature. Today's is the third
we've published by Sharon Chmielarz. a Minnesota poet with several fine books
in print, including The Widow's House, just released by Brighthorse
books.
Fisher’s Club
A roadside inn. Lakeside dive. Spiffed up.
End of a summer day. And I suppose
I should be smiling beneficently
at the families playing near the shore,
their plastic balls and splashes and chatter.
But my eye pivots left to a couple;
he is carrying her into the water.
He's strong enough, and she is light
enough to be carried. I see
how she holds her own, hugging
his neck, his chest steady as his arms.
I have never seen such a careful dunk,
half-dunk, as he gives her. That beautiful
play he makes lifting her from the water.
And I suppose I should be admiring
the sunset, all purple and orange and rose now.
Nice porch here, too. Yeah, great view.
But I have never seen such a loving
carrying as he gives her. Imagine
being so light as to float
above water in love.
American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry
Foundation (www.poetryfoundation.org), publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also
supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln.
Poem copyright ©2015 by Sharon Chmielarz, “Fisher's Club,” from The Widow's
House (Brighthorse Books, 2015). Poem reprinted by permission of Sharon
Chmielarz and the publisher. Introduction copyright ©2016 by The Poetry
Foundation. The introduction’s author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet
Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006. We do
not accept unsolicited manuscripts.
If I could pick one writer whose writing “voice” and persona
I would most like to emulate, a top contender would have to be Jean Kerr. It’s
entirely possible that you’ve never heard of her, so let me introduce you.
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| Jean Kerr, bottom, with Barbara Bel Geddes Photo via Flickr |
Jean Kerr (1922-2003) wrote plays and essays, and was most
popular in the 50s and 60s. Her essays were gathered into collections such as Please
Don’t Eat the Daisies and How I Got to Be Perfect. She was married
to the Pulitzer-prize winning drama critic Walter Kerr, with whom she often
collaborated on plays. They also had six children, five boys and a girl!
Somehow I stumbled onto her books when I was a pre-teen in
the 1970s. Why I should have found a middle-aged playwright and mother of six
so irresistible is a mystery, but I was immediately enamored. Her essays made
me laugh out loud. (Once I remember reading something of hers while in church
and muffling my giggles while my mother glared at me.) I think I identified with her because of the
picture she painted of herself: tall and less than graceful (that was me, too),
smart but slightly awkward and unsure of herself (also me). Despite “those
children, and that dog,” her life seemed full of challenging work and a loving
family. I wanted that, too.
She sounded happy.
Kerr met her husband, Walter, when she was still in college
and he was an assistant professor at a different university. They were married
in 1943, and in 1946 they wrote The Song of Bernadette, a drama that
closed after only two performances. Their later collaborations were more
successful, including a revue called Touch and Go and Goldilocks,
a musical.
Kerr’s most popular play was 1959’s Mary, Mary, a
comedy about a divorced couple discovering that they still loved each other.
One of the longest-running productions of the 1960s, it was also made into a
movie starring Debbie Reynolds. Her last play was Lunch Hour (1980), and
starred Sam Waterston and a post-Saturday Night Live Gilda Radner.
In 1957, her collection of humorous essays, Please Don’t
Eat the Daisies, became a best seller. The book was eventually adapted into
a movie (starring Doris Day and David Niven) as well as a sitcom that ran on
NBC from 1965-1967.
More of Kerr’s essays became the books Penny Candy
and The Snake Has All the Lines. In 1979, How I Got to Be Perfect
pulled together many of the essays from the previous books.
I’ve spent a few happy hours rereading Please Don’t Eat
the Daisies and How I Got to Be Perfect while I wrote this blog
post. Here are a few tidbits:
From the introduction to Please Don’t Eat the Daisies:
“I do have a compulsion to read in out-of-the-way places, and it is often a blessing; on the other hand, it sometimes comes between me and what I tell the children is ‘my work.’ As a matter of fact, I will read anything rather than work. And I don’t mean interesting things like the yellow section of the telephone book or the enclosures that come with the Bloomingdale bill….
“For this reason, and because I have small boys, I do about half of my ‘work’ in the family car, parked alongside a sign that says ‘Littering Is Punishable by a $50 Fine….’”
“Out in the car, where I freeze to death or roast to death depending on the season, all is serene. The few things there are to read in the front-seat area (Chevrolet, E-gasoline-F, 100-temp-200) I have long sine committed to memory. So there is nothing to do but write, after I have the glove compartment tidied up.”
On taking her children to the beach:
“It was my plan to loll in the deck chair and improve my mind while the happy children gamboled and frolicked on the sand. That was my plan. Their plan was to show me two dead crabs, five clam shells, one rusty pail they found under two rocks, the two rocks, two hundred and seventy-two Good Humor sticks, one small boy who had taken off his bathing suit, one enormous hole they dug (and wasn’t it lucky the lifeguard fell in it, and not the old gentleman…), fourteen cigarette butts, and a tear in Gilbert’s new bathing trunks.”
From “Letters of Protest I Never Sent”
“The Ever-Krisp Curtain Co.
Dear Sirs:
In what mad burst of whimsy did you adopt the slogan ‘These curtains laugh at soap and water’? Now, I begrudge no man his flights of fancy. We are all poets at heart. And when I purchased my Ever-Krisp curtains I did not really expect them to burst into wild guffaws or even ladylike giggles the first time I put them in the sink. (As a matter of fact, with five small boys and one loud Siamese cat I don’t want to hear one word from those curtains.) But, in my incurable naivete, I did take your claim to imply that these curtains actually survived contact with soap and water. I don’t mean I expect them to remain ever-krisp. I’m quite accustomed to ever-limp curtains. I did, however, expect them to remain ever-red with ever-white ruffles. As it happens, they are now a sort of off-pink strawberry ripple, which of course doesn’t go with my kitchen.
Ever-Disgusted”
(I also rediscovered the origin of a phrase I use from time to
time, “What I am really looking for is a blessing that’s not in
disguise,” attributed to Kerr’s mother.)
If you want to read Kerr for yourself, her books are out of
print, but used copies are available, and you can download Please Don’t Eat
the Daisies for free here. You can also check your library for her
work—mine has one of her books and one of her plays. Some of the essays feel
dated, but many of them still amuse.
You can also take a peek at the Kerrs’ former rather fantastic and unusual house (which she referred to jokingly as the “Kerr-Hilton”) by clicking here.
Funny but not mean-spirited or crass, bemused, occasionally
flustered, but always able to rise to the occasion (though not always successfully)
and laugh about it later—that’s the spirit she brought to the page. I haven’t
found another author quite like her.
Do you have a favorite not-so-well-known author? Please share!
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| Photo courtesy Morgan Sessions |
“Joy does not simply happen to us. We have to choose joy and keep choosing it every day.”
—Henri J.M. Nouwen
 |
| Photo courtesy Valentin Sabau |
It seems like it should be simple to be kind. After all, to
be kind, we don’t have to perform extraordinary acts, give away large sums of
money, or make huge sacrifices. Kindness is a much cozier, more approachable
concept, as simple as offering a smile, a few genuine words of compassion, or a
listening ear.
Why does that feel so hard sometimes?
I’ve been thinking about kindness a lot since I wrote the
post here. Actively attempting to perform acts of kindness, rather than waiting
for an opportunity to present itself has proven to be more challenging than I
expected, even though kindness has always been a value important to me. Many
questions and decisions arise. How to be kind? Who needs kindness? What will be
the best thing to do for them? What about the man on the corner holding up the
sign? What about the emails in my inbox wanting money for good causes, causes I
believe in? What if someone takes advantage of me? This is a good chance to
give up the illusion of control. I can’t know what’s in another’s heart,
whether they’re taking advantage of me or not. I can know what’s in my
heart.
I still have a lot to learn, but here are a few conclusions
I’ve drawn after two weeks of deliberately trying to practice kindness:
Become aware. Maybe this is for me alone, but I tend
to walk around in my own little world, consumed by my thoughts and imaginings.
I’m sure I miss opportunities to be kind simply because I’m oblivious. I’m
making more of an effort to pay attention to what’s happening around me,
actively seeking ways to be kind, listening more closely to friends and family.
What you notice multiplies—noticing opportunities to be kind has opened my eyes
to more opportunities.
Start small and close. Be kind to your loved ones.
Think about what you do for your family as kind actions, not requirements.
There are a few chores around my home that I truly dislike (and sometimes
resent). When I think about them as kind actions for people I love, I’m much
less irritated by them (the chores and the people). Also think about
what acts of kindness come easily to you—maybe you love baking and sharing your
creations with others, or you’re great at finding exactly the right words of
encouragement. Start there.
Use your words. Phrases as simple as please, thank
you, can I help? might be just what someone needs to hear. Consider your
tone of voice, too. How many arguments start over tone of voice rather than
words themselves?
Fill your well. It’s hard to be kind to others when
you’re unkind to yourself. Meet your needs for rest, nourishment (physical,
mental, and spiritual), pleasure, and adventure. Don’t be stingy with yourself
so that you have something to draw from to be kind to others.
Follow your heart. When you have a kind impulse,
follow it. When faced with a choice, ask, “What would be the kind thing to do?”
Retain your boundaries. Being kind doesn’t mean being
a doormat. Kindness is not “niceness,” bending your desires to suit someone
else’s agenda.
Kindness sometimes feels awkward and scary. Putting yourself
out there makes you feel vulnerable, offering a gift that might be rejected or
misunderstood. It’s a risk you’ll have to take if you value kindness and want
to bring more of it into your life. Start small, and see where it takes you.
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| Photo courtesy James DeMers |
Introduction by Ted Kooser: How I love poems in which
there is evidence of a poet paying close attention to the world about him. Here
Angelo Giambra, who lives in Florida, has been keeping an eye on the bees.
The Water Carriers
On hot days we would see them
leaving the hive in swarms. June and I
would watch them weave their way
through the sugarberry trees toward the pond
where they would stop to take a drink,
then buzz their way back, plump and full of water,
to drop it on the backs of the fanning bees.
If you listened you could hear them, their tiny wings
beating in unison as they cooled down the hive.
My brother caught one once, its bulbous body
bursting with water, beating itself against
the smooth glass wall of the canning jar.
He lit a match, dropped it in, but nothing
happened. The match went out and the bee
swam through the mix of sulfur and smoke
until my brother let it out. It flew straight
back to the hive. Later, we skinny-dipped
in the pond, the three of us, the August sun
melting the world around us as if it were
wax. In the cool of the evening, we walked
home, pond water still dripping from our skin,
glistening and twinkling like starlight.
American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation
(www.poetryfoundation.org), publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported
by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln. Poem
copyright ©2009 by Angelo Giambra, whose most recent book of poetry is “Oranges
and Eggs,” Finishing Line Press, 2010. Poem reprinted from the “South Dakota
Review,” Vol. 47, no. 4, Winter 2009, by permission of Angelo Giambra and
publisher. Introduction copyright © 2011 by The Poetry Foundation. The
introduction’s author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate
Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006. We do not
accept unsolicited manuscripts.
Welcome to summer reruns! About once a month, I’ll be sharing a post from the archives. I hope you enjoy this one, from 2011.
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“It does not matter how slowly you go so long as you do not stop.”—Confucius
I’m not particularly patient. I want to get things done, and I want them done Right Now. However, especially with a horse, I’ve learned that some things absolutely cannot be rushed. They take the time they take, and you’ll be much less frustrated, not to mention safer, if you relax—and sometimes throw out entirely—your expectations. For me, when I’m learning something new (or teaching Tank something new), things go better when I take baby steps. Sometimes to my embarrassment, I’ve become the poster child for baby steps at my barn as my trainer often uses me as an example of someone who takes things slowly. I am not naturally athletic, and frankly, I’m also a big chicken, so yes, I do take things slowly. When I take a step forward too quickly, I often end up taking two steps back. What works for me in riding is breaking down every new skill into small parts, then practicing those parts until I feel completely comfortable with them. Then I can move on.
Baby steps work great for other pursuits, too: cleaning and reorganizing the house, learning to draw and paint, changing diet and exercise habits and so on. The beauty of baby steps is that if each small step is solid, you’ll find yourself making steady progress. You’ll be less likely to stagger forward then backward in fits and starts. In this way, you will go slower to go faster.
Of course, this is what works for me. Each person has his or her own best method for personal growth—my baby steps may drive some people absolutely mad with frustration. This is where you must listen to your heart for direction. What works for me may not work for you, and vice versa, so please ignore this advice if you’re more like a hare than a tortoise. Few things make me crazier than to have someone tell me my way is wrong and I should do things differently!
Sometimes I get frustrated, and wish I could progress a bit faster than I do and I have to remind myself that it takes the time it takes. Overall, this slow and steady method works for me. It works for Tank, who gets anxious when he’s not sure what he’s being asked to do. We plod along, tortoise-like, but we’re going forward. And that’s what matters.
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| Photo courtesy Tim Marshall |
“How desirable is a proper balance between motion and rest,
and how difficult it is at times for us to achieve it. Alternation lies
everywhere in nature. Even cows and chickens take time off from producing milk
and eggs. Only we human beings foolishly forget these solid well-known truths
at times and try to live our lives from crest of wave to crest of wave with
never a trough between. We forget that in the trough the next crest builds.”
—Jean Hersey, The Shape of a Year
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Image courtesy Laure Ferlita
It’s been nearly a week since the unthinkable events at
Pulse in Orlando, just an hour and a half from where I live. It feels pointless
to write about happiness—let alone simple pleasures and everyday adventures—when
we face one unthinkable tragedy after another—shootings, natural disasters,
armed conflict, suffering on a scale we can’t imagine and feel helpless to
alleviate.
No one is a stranger to suffering. Just as we are united in
our desire to live happy lives, we are also united in suffering. Each one of us
hides some kind of wound inside. We all know how it feels to hurt, feel
helpless, rage against the universe, or try to find meaning in the face of
senselessness. We should not turn suffering and pain into anger and hate,
though that sometimes feels impossible. What should we do instead?
“You take it all in. You let the pain of the world touch you and you turn it into compassion.”*
In the aftermath of the Pulse shooting, people and
organizations are turning pain into compassion. For example:
The Tampa Bay Rays have dedicated tonight’s game to the
victims of the Orlando shooting, and are donating the proceeds to the Pulse Victims
Fund. The game sold out (something that doesn’t often happen).
The Go Fund Me account for the victims set a record,
collecting more than 4 million dollars.
And more personally and poignantly, here’s Laure Ferlita’s
way of coping. She wrote: “Here's my idea—I intend to pay kindness
forward 49 times for each of the lives lost. Then I'll pay kindness
forward 53 more times for each of those injured. That's 102 acts of
kindness paid—deliberately—into a world that seems to have tilted ever so
slightly off its axis.” (Click here to read the entire post. Click here if you’d
like learn the names of those who lost their lives.)
Yes, there is evil in this world. But there is also good.
There is kindness and love, and we can decide to be on the side of
kindness and love by our words and our actions. Decide to turn pain into
compassion. Decide.
*The sixteenth Gyalwa Karmapa, quoted in When Things Fall Apart, by Pema Chodron.
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Introduction by Ted Kooser: Descriptive poetry depends for its effects in part upon the
vividness of details. Here the Virginia poet, Claudia Emerson, describes the
type of old building all of us have seen but may not have stopped to look at
carefully. And thoughtfully.
Stable
One rusty horseshoe hangs on a nail
above the door, still losing its luck,
and a work-collar swings, an empty
old noose. The silence waits, wild to be
broken by hoofbeat and heavy
harness slap, will founder but remain;
while, outside, above the stable,
eight, nine, now ten buzzards swing low
in lazy loops, a loose black warp
of patience, bearing the blank sky
like a pall of wind on mourning
wings. But the bones of this place are
long picked clean. Only the hayrake's
ribs still rise from the rampant grasses.
Poem copyright © 1997 by Claudia Emerson Andrews, a 2005
Witter Bynner Fellow of the Library of Congress. Reprinted from “Pharoah,
Pharoah,” (1997) by permission of the author, whose newest book, “Late Wife,”
will appear this fall; both collections are published by Louisiana State
University’s Southern Messenger Poets. This weekly column is supported by The
Poetry Foundation, The Library of Congress and the Department of English at the
University of Nebraska, Lincoln. The column does not accept unsolicited poetry.
Tell me something. When was the last time you made a list of
fun things to do…and actually did them? Don’t look now, but it’s already
June (how?!)—the Friday night of summer, as Laura Vanderkam says. Now’s
your chance. Time to plan some simple pleasures and everyday adventures to make
the hot, sweaty months pass more happily. I did this last year (click here to
read 2015’s list), with mixed success. Take Tank to the beach? Check. Go to a Rays
game? Yup. Make frozen pops, spend a day by the pool, or watch the sunset at
the beach?
Nope.
Lucky for me, I get a do-over. Summer has already barged its
way into central Florida (complete with a tropical storm, thank you very much),
so I’m trying again. Here’s my list for the summer of 2016:
- Have a pedicure (thanks to my friend Mary for the gift certificate to a local salon).
- Add some new tunes to my music library.
- Go to the movies with my Broadway season ticket buddies (we don’t have another show until October).
- Make homemade ice cream.
- Practice
riding Tank bridleless, while it’s hot and he’s
mellowlazy.
- Go on at least one field trip with Laure Ferlita. Maybe here or here. Hmm...I see a food theme developing...
- Create a new summer reading list—and start reading from it.
- Finish filling at least one sketchbook. I have two that are nearly full.
- Plan a trip to visit my family in California.
- Buy meals from Dinner Done so I don’t have to cook so much.
Sure, I’ll be working on my writing business, painting my
bathroom, cleaning out the fridge…but I’m also planning some serious fun. I
hope you will, too.
What’s on your bucket list this summer?
