I thought of her while looking out my window the other day, hoping that she had also gladdened at this turning of the year.
Here is a photo taken by a colleague after work last week, with me standing in front of a snow-dusted tree in the early evening. I am dressed mostly in black and snowflakes swirl all around. The landscape lighting and the flash manage to etch highlights in the dark.
I have, since last April Fool’s Day, been at work on my first novel. My current best guess is that I am at the two-thirds point and eager to finish the homeward journey so I can see the completed first draft in its entirety. Then begins the hard work, for I find the imagining to be play; revising will be another matter altogether.Though I have never before attempted anything so grand in scale, this is but the flowering of an old seed. When composing some playful tales back in the early 1970s, I conceived of related stories in a larger cycle. The first tale, chronologically, though not in order of imagining, was of a lad who became an epic hero. His deed was the slaying of a demon, a discarnate force of darkness and despair. The outline was in my head, the general course of his hero’s journey discernible on my maps of an alternate world.
And there the tale has remained, ever present in my head but not yet on paper (nor, in more recent times, on disk). Since those early days I have learned more of darkness and depression, not to mention the human condition in general. One would hope that I might learn some things in over three decades!
As a recently ordained assisting priest I came to realize that, as I put it, “everyone is bleeding on the inside.” Whatever our perceptions of others, no matter how “together” they seem—how successful, smart, talented, good-looking, wealthy, powerful, peaceful, charming, and spiritually evolved—they have their own wounds, pains, anxieties, and fears. This unseen hemorrhage is a great leveler and a key to compassion. One need not know the specific pain of another to acknowledge simply that it is there. It is not necessary to open the door of their heart and mind and look within. Trust me, the wound is there.
Once we recognize this, we can more easily set aside envy, resentment, or intimidation in order to behold our fellow sufferer. It is not a matter of “pulling them down” to our miserable level. Actually, I find it ennobling of all. We all suffer, we all try to cope, we all do what we can. Some may do it more elegantly, or more effectively, or more convincingly. But we are, as we affirm so often that it is a cliché, all in this together.
Today I came across a parallel insight. Wee Mama, as she (I assume “she”) identifies herself on Daily Kos, has a tag for her signature line that struck me: “Be very kind, for everyone you know is fighting a great battle.”
This actually takes it a step further. Not only do we all suffer our inner wounds, we all struggle in our own way. Each of us has our own epic battle, the living of our particular life. Each of us is torn constantly between good and evil, most often in the small choices among sundry goods and various evils. It is the decision for the greater good or the lesser evil, and the repeated settling for the lesser good or being swallowed up in the greater evil, that shapes our struggle.
To recognize these truths about each other is to be aware of our common humanity, our limitations, our great failures, and our potential for glory. Once we see this, and realize the truth of it, it is so very much easier to “be very kind.”
How much better our struggles, small and large, might go if we were more kind to ourselves and to one another, if we chose to be allies in each other’s attempt to do right, to do well, to do better.
One of the benefits and dangers of writing fiction is reflecting on what the telling of a tale has told about ourselves. I know that I am in every character and situation and they are all a part of me. (Memories of learning about Gestalt many years ago….) What am I revealing of my own reality or what I wish my reality were when I tell a story of a young man—far younger than I—who has a mystical vision of ultimate light and also, willingly, enters utter darkness?
As midnight approaches and my mind and body weary, I do not propose to answer that question here. Indeed, the question will stay with me through the finishing of the first draft, and the revising, and the pondering when the tale is told.
I wrote on New Year’s Day about “Black on White,” the ebon motion of ravens against a snowy background. Tonight it shifts to light and darkness, hope versus despair.
And so I share the photo: darkness and light everywhere one looks and myself in the middle of the mystery.
“Be very kind, for everyone you know is fighting a great battle.”
(h/t to Wee Mama)
--The BB
