Walk Gently Through Life
You’ve heard it before - life is a process, live one day at a time, take it easy, stay in the moment. And at most times you’ve found these reminders helpful. But what about when the world is crashing in on you? When you are hit with one more trial or issue than you think you can handle? When life is overwhelming, the outlook bleak, or the road before you difficult with no lessening of the darkness in sight? On those kinds of days or during these periods of our life journey, our therapy journey, our spiritual journey it can seem impossible to take it slowly.
Perhaps you’ve been working for a long time for an employer and you find that the work is no longer rewarding and the days drag on. Or perhaps you have been doing your personal work for a long time and turn one more bend than you’d expected and now are face to face with the demon who has scared you and your “little child” to your core. Maybe you have just separated and are at the crossroads of your future and don’t know how you’ll make it alone - you’re suffocating on aloneness. These are the dark days of the soul as someone said years ago.
Recently I reread a quote for which I have no reference but which has been deeply meaningful to me in the past:
Dear one,
You are so young, so before all beginning,
I want to beg you as much as I can,
to be patient to all that is unsolved in your heart
and try to love the questions themselves
like locked rooms and like books that are written
in a very foreign language.
Do not now seek the answers which cannot be
given you because you would not be able to live
with them.
And the point is to live everything.
Live the questions now.
Perhaps you will gradually
without knowing it
live along some distant day into the answer.
Love,
Your friend
The toughest days in life are the ones during which we must keep putting one foot in front of the other without the answers. We balk, we rage, we fight the “not knowing” when it is the very process of not knowing, the fight, the process that leads to knowing. When we learned reading in grade school we were slowly taught. First the letters, then the sounds of each letter, then how to combine letters for words, then how to combine words for sentences. We couldn’t understand sentences until we first understood the difference between a and z. So it is with the journey later if life. We need to trust, difficult though it may be, that we have the questions and answers we need for today.
Tomorrow will take care of itself. Easy to say, hard to live. But when we actually look only at today we can enjoy the book we are reading today. And trust that by enjoying the chapters, one at a time, we will come to the end of the book and then lead to the next book. And we stop confusing Shakespearean sonnets with mysteries by Miss Marple.
There are many who have walked similar roads. William Styron fought through his own severe depression and shares it eloquently in Darkness Visible. The blackness of life in a time of depression is very isolating and profoundly lonely. Styron speaks to the heart of anyone who is or has suffered their own depression. But what if depression isn’t the issue so much as trying to figure out who you are or what life is to be for you? Another pioneer of her own wilderness experience is Alice Koller who writes of her long walk through the lonely days of self discovery in An Unknown Woman. Sometimes we need time alone - whether it be months or moments, to center, ground, or otherwise calm ourselves. While it can also feel quite lonely and as if we are walking a road no one else has traveled there are others, perhaps even within our own home or group, who can reassure on the journey. So it isn’t just the future it isn’t just the deepness of depression, but it is the past and the future and depression? To the person dealing with all of these issues Patty Duke offers her insights gained from her own journey through life in A Brilliant Madness. There are other books as well that can offer the hope offered by others who have walked the lonely or pain-filled or dark paths as well - and arrived at a place of health and peace.
I was reminded recently by my friend, Fr. Peter, that we all have times of desert walks. That it is from the barren desert of winter that the most beautiful flowers grow. Just for today, live the day, the moment, the piece of the journey you have been given. Just for today, live your journey and halt the incessant questions about the future. Just for today, find the beauty in the sand and the cactus that has yet to bloom. For tomorrow, tomorrow will bring the wildflowers in abundance.
Perhaps you’ve been working for a long time for an employer and you find that the work is no longer rewarding and the days drag on. Or perhaps you have been doing your personal work for a long time and turn one more bend than you’d expected and now are face to face with the demon who has scared you and your “little child” to your core. Maybe you have just separated and are at the crossroads of your future and don’t know how you’ll make it alone - you’re suffocating on aloneness. These are the dark days of the soul as someone said years ago.
Recently I reread a quote for which I have no reference but which has been deeply meaningful to me in the past:
Dear one,
You are so young, so before all beginning,
I want to beg you as much as I can,
to be patient to all that is unsolved in your heart
and try to love the questions themselves
like locked rooms and like books that are written
in a very foreign language.
Do not now seek the answers which cannot be
given you because you would not be able to live
with them.
And the point is to live everything.
Live the questions now.
Perhaps you will gradually
without knowing it
live along some distant day into the answer.
Love,
Your friend
The toughest days in life are the ones during which we must keep putting one foot in front of the other without the answers. We balk, we rage, we fight the “not knowing” when it is the very process of not knowing, the fight, the process that leads to knowing. When we learned reading in grade school we were slowly taught. First the letters, then the sounds of each letter, then how to combine letters for words, then how to combine words for sentences. We couldn’t understand sentences until we first understood the difference between a and z. So it is with the journey later if life. We need to trust, difficult though it may be, that we have the questions and answers we need for today.
Tomorrow will take care of itself. Easy to say, hard to live. But when we actually look only at today we can enjoy the book we are reading today. And trust that by enjoying the chapters, one at a time, we will come to the end of the book and then lead to the next book. And we stop confusing Shakespearean sonnets with mysteries by Miss Marple.
There are many who have walked similar roads. William Styron fought through his own severe depression and shares it eloquently in Darkness Visible. The blackness of life in a time of depression is very isolating and profoundly lonely. Styron speaks to the heart of anyone who is or has suffered their own depression. But what if depression isn’t the issue so much as trying to figure out who you are or what life is to be for you? Another pioneer of her own wilderness experience is Alice Koller who writes of her long walk through the lonely days of self discovery in An Unknown Woman. Sometimes we need time alone - whether it be months or moments, to center, ground, or otherwise calm ourselves. While it can also feel quite lonely and as if we are walking a road no one else has traveled there are others, perhaps even within our own home or group, who can reassure on the journey. So it isn’t just the future it isn’t just the deepness of depression, but it is the past and the future and depression? To the person dealing with all of these issues Patty Duke offers her insights gained from her own journey through life in A Brilliant Madness. There are other books as well that can offer the hope offered by others who have walked the lonely or pain-filled or dark paths as well - and arrived at a place of health and peace.
I was reminded recently by my friend, Fr. Peter, that we all have times of desert walks. That it is from the barren desert of winter that the most beautiful flowers grow. Just for today, live the day, the moment, the piece of the journey you have been given. Just for today, live your journey and halt the incessant questions about the future. Just for today, find the beauty in the sand and the cactus that has yet to bloom. For tomorrow, tomorrow will bring the wildflowers in abundance.