Living Through Loss, Seeing the Light
Sometimes people are surprised when they learn that I’m typically reading 6 or even 7 books at a time. This practice comes with a cost; I admit that sometimes I have to backtrack a few pages to remind myself where I am in a particular book. But one thing I love about reading multiple texts is the serendipity, the unexpected connections between books that in topic and style seem totally unrelated. (But, really, isn’t everything related somehow to everything?) Sometimes, I find, I recognize the power of a point made in one book only after it’s reinforced by something I read in another book. I encountered such a connection today. Consider the first stanza of a short poem by Maggie Smith, included in her book Dear Writer:
When a tree is cut down, the sky’s like
finally, and rushes in
Add to this a poem that Pico Iyer reports he discovered in Japan, included in his book Aflame:
My house burned down
I can now see better
The rising moon
Both poems describe how the loss of one thing opens up the appearance of something else. The image in the second poem is even more powerful when one learns that Iyer recalled this short poem at the end of an essay he wrote about a fire that destroyed the house he shared with his mother, along with everything they owned. As he told his mother, “all her fifty-nine years of photos, of keepsakes, all her jewels and lecture notes were gone” (p. 32). And the power of Smith’s poem is more poignant when one learns the poem’s title: “At the End of My Marriage, I Think of Something My Daughter Said About Trees” (p. 60).
Both Smith and Iyer, it seems found opportunities for growth, for life, in the face of loss. Reading these poems reminds me that when I anticipate or fear a loss, I’m much more inclined to focus on the loss than on what the loss might reveal; people who know me well know that I can catastrophize with the best. I’m much more likely to fear what might happen than to celebrate what could happen. That’s especially problematic these days. I wince each morning even before I pick up the daily newspaper.
Reflecting on these poems, I’m pushing myself to live up to my commitment to live in the uncertainty. I remind myself of Solnit’s urging to hope for a better future and to act on the strength of that hope. I need to engage with the world as I find it.
One other bit from today’s reading, Meditation #51 in Claude Anshin Thomas’s Bringing Meditation to Life: 101 Teachings on the Path of Zen Practice:
If I want to wake up and experience life directly, I have to be willing to be uncomfortable. We live in a society that tells us to avoid any sensation, feeling, or experience categorized as “uncomfortable” or “unpleasant.” We are encouraged not to be sad, lonely, confused, or frustrated, to name a few of those feelings. We need to learn to become at peace with what we have been conditioned to experience as our unpeacefulness. It is in the heart of our unpeacefulness that we can discover the true nature of a balanced life lived directly, with all its joys and sorrows.