"There is always the temptation in life to diddle around making itsy-bitsy friends and meals and journeys for years on end. It is all so self conscious, so apparently moral...But I won't have it. The world is wilder than that in all directions, more dangerous...more extravagant and bright. We are...raising tomatoes when we should be raising Cain, or Lazarus."
— Annie Dillard
Once upon a time someone told me that I was a little like a walking contradiction in that I wanted peace so badly, while simultaneously wanting so many things that don't make for peace. In that particular situation I was feeling especially unsatisfied by my small college in a small state doing small things. I had grand memories of flying around the world to serve people in
dire need or just this growing sense that everything around me wasn't important enough.
What I have learned since then, I suppose, is that there are worlds in people... and beyond that, worlds of hurt. No community is without its beggars, its bullies, and its diamonds in the rough.
I have learned that every human being needs a reason to believe that living is important. Otherwise, the burden of living tends to be too much for one person to shoulder.
This morning I walked from 12th and Locust to find 13th Street riddled with flashing lights. Apparently around 2am this morning a young man attempted suicide. Just a few minutes ago, I saw a girl about 15 years old with her Father slowly walking down the street toward their car (parked in front of the gym). She was sobbing uncontrollably and he was wide-eyed and persed his lips.
For every piece of a day that
feels like this - that feels like death - that feels like nothing could be gilded in greatness, and nothing could be worth living for - there is a human being somewhere who ultimately makes the choice to do
more than just be, but rather, live.
Living is not always beautiful, mysterious, or grand - sometimes it is gettin' money, going to sleep on time, and making your own damn meals. I believe that it's ok if that's what we see most of the time. I'm also a firm believer in taking the time to see through all that muck to the
gilded moments. It's been said that belief can change your world. Simply stated, I think what you choose to notice can change your beliefs.
I think every day we must make that choice - and that all of us, in some small way, are heroes. For the record, that's not the same thing as calling everyone special. It is heroic to think of what a human being can do with one life - how much love can be poured out, how much thought, art, music, and narrative. And yet, all of these great things take one thing: work.
"What does it feel like to be alive?
Living, you stand under a waterfall. You leave the sleeping shore deliberately; you shed your dusty clothes, pick your barefoot way over the high, slippery rocks, hold your breath, choose your footing, and step into the waterfall. The hard water pelts your skull, bangs in bits on your shoulders and arms. The strong water dashes down beside you and you feel it along your calves and thighs rising roughly backup, up to the roiling surface, full of bubbles that slide up your skin or break on you at full speed. Can you breathe here? Here where the force is the greatest and only the strength of your neck holds the river out of your face. Yes, you can breathe even here. You could learn to live like this. And you can, if you concentrate, even look out at the peaceful far bank where you try to raise your arms. What a racket in your ears, what a scattershot pummeling!
It is time pounding at you, time. Knowing you are alive is watching on every side your generation's short time falling away as fast as rivers drop through air, and feeling it hit."
— Annie Dillard (An American Childhood) <----- I really need to read this book again.
