Dance
Despair is our tutor.
In the face of the most sadistic, destructive madness our country has ever visited on the world and ourselves, is there a cure for Sadness?
For despair?
No. Sadness and despair are hard wired into humans when faced with contradiction to what our better angels understand is our reason for being here. They are intended, not only to alert us to things gone wrong, but to protect us from our lesser angels, who tempt us into considering we might as well go along with those who seem to hold all the power.
That would be to surrender our very humanity. And that we must not do.
Allow sadness and despair to embrace you when the choices our fellows make, turn your stomach, as if you had eaten spoiled food. Because that’s what we’re being fed right now.
There’s no cure, but like pain killers, there are things that can make the pain bearable while we prepare for our world to turn sorrow and despair into the new life.
Hesitant, awkward first steps, as we join in the dance.
Tiny, seemingly impotent gestures. Training sessions, stiffening our resolve, so we won’t be coopted.
In whatever way, we can remind ourselves that we’re holding out for the surprising new life that springs from the compost, from the rot. Decomposition precedes recomposition.
Daffodils daring to push through the snow.
And we? Gardners. Enablers. Preparing the ground for the coming celebration.
On behalf of our fellows. And ourselves.
What a surprise we are, this odds-against miracle we showed up for.
Our hearts are tuned to beautiful music, to which we dance.
And dance we must.
Thanks, Blayney. For some reason, your post today brought to mind one of my favorite songs: "For a Dancer." Here's my entry on it in my DMDMQ:
"Just do the steps that you've been shown/By everyone you've ever known/Until the dance becomes your very own/No matter how close to yours another's steps have grown/In the end there is one dance you'll do alone." Jackson Browne, from the song “For a Dancer,” on the album Late for the Sky (1974)
QUOTE NOTE: Jackson wrote this hauntingly beautiful song in memory of his friend, Adam Saylor, who died in 1968, possibly from a suicide (an earlier song about Saylor, titled “Song For Adam,” contained the lyric, “The story’s told that Adam jumped, but I’ve been thinking that he fell”).
Jackson has written many moving songs in his career, and “For a Dancer” may be the very best. It concludes with this verse: “Into a dancer you have grown/ From a seed somebody else has thrown/Go on ahead and throw some seeds of your own/And somewhere between the time you arrive and the time you go/May lie a reason you were alive but you'll never know.” Listen to the song here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XnT_PbnpijE&list=RDXnT_PbnpijE&start_radio=1
We have to focus on the present moment in our own lives. Put our feet on the floor , look out the window and name three things, breathe in and then breathe out a little bit longer and do this at least 10 times, know that yawning is good for you, shows your parasympathetic nervous system is calming.