Gathered a few of my very best friends around me these past days, the morning sun so far south we had to strain against the far northern side of my living room window to catch it piercing the pale winter light through the trees. Thought it unseemly, especially in this time of stout resolutions on the cusp of a new year, not to share some of their reflections with you…
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“Everything passes away—suffering pain blood hunger pestilence. The sword will pass away too but the stars will still remain when the shadows of our presence and our deeds have vanished from the earth. There is no man who does not know that. Why then will we not turn our eyes towards the stars? Why?”
—From Mikhail Bulgakov’s “The White Guard” (1925)
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“The sparrow is sorry for the peacock at the burden of its tail.”
—From Rabindranath Tagore’s “Stray Birds” (1917)
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“Once I saw a fox, in an acre of cranberries, leaping and pouncing, leaping and pouncing, leaping and falling back, its forelegs merrily slapping the air as it tried to tap a yellow butterfly with its thin black forefeet, the butterfly fluttering just out of reach all across the deep green gloss and plush of the sweet-smelling bog.”
—From Mary Oliver’s “Staying Alive” (1995)
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“In my young days I never
Tasted sorrow, I wanted
To become a famous poet.
I wanted to get ahead
So I pretended to be sad.
Now I am old and have known
The depths of every sorrow,
And I am content to loaf
And enjoy the clear autumn.”
—Hsin Chi Chi (1140-1207) in Kenneth Rexroth’s “100 More Poems From the Chinese” (1970)
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“I am aware that every time I have a conversation with a book, I benefit from someone’s decision against silence.”
― From Dear Friend, from My Life I Write to You in Your Life” (2017)
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“Listen privately, silently to the voices that rise up
from the pages of books and your own heart.
Be still and listen to the voices that belong
to the streambanks and the trees and the open fields.
There are songs and sayings that belong to this place,
by which it speaks for itself and no other.”
—From Wendell Berry’s “Leavings” (2010)
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“In spite of illness, in spite even of the archenemy sorrow, one can remain alive long past the usual date of disintegration if one is unafraid of change, insatiable in intellectual curiosity, interested in big things, and happy in small ways.”
—From Edith Wharton’s “A Backward Glance” (1934)
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“How long, how long, in infinite Pursuit
Of this and that endeavor and dispute?
Better be merry with the fruitful grape
Than sadden after none, or bitter, Fruit.”
—From “The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám” (1048-1131), translated by Edward FitzGerald (1859)
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“Nature gets credit which should in truth be reserved for ourselves: the rose for its scent: the nightingale for his song: and the sun for his radiance. The poets are entirely mistaken. They should address their lyrics to themselves, and should turn them into odes of self-congratulation on the excellency of the human mind.”
—From Alfred North Whitehead’s “Science and the Modern World” (1925)
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“Little things are big.”
—From Yogi Berra’s, “What Time Is It? You Mean Now? Advice for Life from the Zennest Master of Them All” (2003)
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“we will wear
new bones again
these rainy days
break out through
another month
into sun and honey time.
worlds buzz over us like bees
we be splendid in new bones.
other people think they know
how long life is
how strong life is
we know.”
—From “The Collected Poems of Lucille Clifton” (2010)
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“To say that I am made in the image of God is to say that Love is the reason for my existence, for God is love. Love is my true identity. Selflessness is my true self.”
—From Thomas Merton’s “Seeds of Contemplation” (1949)
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“The house the psyche actually inhabits is a compound of connecting corridors, multi-leveled, with windows everywhere and with large ongoing extensions ‘under construction,’ and sudden dead-ends and holes in the floorboards; and this house is filled already with occupants, other voices in other rooms, reflecting nature alive, echoing again the Great God Pan alive, a pantheism rekindled by the psyche’s belief in its own personified images.”
—From James Hillman’s “Re-Visioning Psychology” (1975)
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“Do you take pride in your hurt? Does it make you seem large and tragic? …Well, think about it. Maybe you’re playing a part on a great stage with only yourself as audience.”
― From John Steinbeck’s “East of Eden” (1952)
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“It’s an infernal nuisance to love Life as I do. I seem to love it more as time goes on rather than less. It never becomes a habit to me. It’s always a marvel. I do hope I’ll be able to keep in it long enough to do some really good work. I’m sick of people dying who promise well.”
—From “The Collected Letters of Katherine Mansfield” Vol. IV (1996)
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“Lay hold of today’s task, and you will not need to depend so much upon tomorrow’s. While we are postponing, life speeds by.”
—From Seneca the Younger’s “Moral Letters to Lucilius” (65 AD)
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“I sit with Shakespeare, and he winces not. Across the color line I move arm and arm with Balzac and Dumas, where smiling men and welcoming women glide in gilded halls. From out of the caves of evening that swing between the strong-limbed Earth and the tracery of stars, I summon Aristotle and Aurelius and what soul I will, and they come all graciously with no scorn nor condescension. So, wed with Truth, I dwell above the veil.”
—From W.E.B. Du Bois’s “The Souls of Black Folk” (1903)
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“Accepting oneself does not preclude an attempt to become better.”
―From “The Habit of Being: Letters of
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“The heavier the burden, the closer our lives come to the earth, the more real and truthful they become. Conversely, the absolute absence of burden causes man to be lighter than air, to soar into heights, take leave of the earth and his earthly being, and become only half real, his movements as free as they are insignificant. What then shall we choose? Weight or lightness?”
― From
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“Cease, every joy, to glimmer in my mind,
But leave,—oh! leave the light of Hope behind!”
—From Thomas Campbell’s “Pleasures of Hope” (1799)
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Milky Way by Carlos Villamayor, Los Cabos, Mexico https://www.flickr.com/photos/villamayor/
Hi Andrew,
Thanks for the year end nuggets. I especially liked the John Steinbeck quote,…couldn’t help attaching it to some others after taking it to my own heart,… not an unfamiliar message in the personhood quest. It set off more thoughts.
Who are the “walk-ons” on our stage, the casual breezing through, leaving barely a ripple in perception? Who are the players that bump into us with their perceptions, requiring more from us with so many possibilities?
The other may not see me as I see myself, and vice versa.
To begin to know another means caring to look, with respect and humility, beyond the boundary of our own perceptions.
Photo of cute cherub gives joy and hope to us. Thanks for that too!
Hugs to you and yours for the New Year!
Marianne
Hey Marianne, that Steinbeck quote had me doing a lot of thinking, too, including thinking about jettisoning it because it perhaps sounded too challenging for a New Year’s post intended to be uplifting. But I finally decided my readers could handle a little direct questioning food-for-thought without falling over themselves on their way to 2025, so in it remained!
Great question about the “walk-ons” in our lives, very much like the minor/supporting actors in a stage or movie production—not central, but wouldn’t be the same without ’em! It’s one of the most interesting and rewarding features of a memorial service for a loved one. We usually know their core group of friends and fellow family, but after a service, you hear from all manner of people you had no idea of—friends, neighbors, co-workers—whose lives your beloved influenced, and who influenced him or her in myriad ways and helped give all their lives the roundness and dimension they most always have.
Thanks, too, for the reflections on truly knowing an other. You’ve said a lot in a little there.
Great to hear from you as always, and onwards now to a year in which we will perhaps have to keep our wits about us as never before, yes?
I think you’ve hit all the bases here. Of course, as you know, when I think of bases, I think baseball. So, I’ll go with some quotes attributed to the Yankee Yogi. These are just five of his attributed “homers”: 1) If you come to a fork in the road, take it. 2) It’s deja vu all over again. 3) Never answer an anonymous letter. 4) The future ain’t what it used to be. 5) Nobody goes there. It’s too crowded. The list of Yogi-isms is extensive, easily more than any other athlete. There’s actually a book of his quotes which sells for $10 on Amazon. It wouldn’t surprise me if his unique brand of wisdom is found in greater numbers than Whitman, Thoreau or Emerson combined! It’s well deserved. Those cats never won an MVP, but Yogi has three of them.
Incidentally, Ms. Kyrkjobel’s “Auld Lang Syne” is stunning. Thanks for that beauty on this almost new year.
Yeah, she’s a talent, glad you thought so too, Robert. It strikes me that we really don’t hear much from that part of the world in politics, the arts, sports, whatever. Maybe because they seem so stable and steady and self-sufficient, almost never on the front page with anything. Which also makes me think: Why can’t WE be more like the Scandinavians for a little while?
As for Yogi, I treated myself to most all of the ones you mentioned in putting this together. He’s always worth a little review, but “Little things are big” is not only funny, but perhaps unintentionally may have been the most profound, Zen-like thing he ever said. Had you in mind in pursuing it—one could argue no collection of aphorisms is complete without a Yogiism, eh?
This set was Useful. .. maybe as a RE-set . A new year’s Rinse — Spin — Dry freshening up — uplift
Good Job
Glad to hear that, Jim, we do aim to be useful here, to be sure! (After a fashion…) Thanks for stopping by!