I’ve been leafing through old files again. It seems like the season for it. Today I ran across an essay I wrote on a lovely June Day way back in 2016, an age that seems to belong, somehow, to a different world. Still, we grappled then with the same kinds of fears we find ourselves facing today. Even though it’s a tad longer than my usual Sunday Letters, I thought the piece might touch you as it did me. So here it is, with love. ~Susan
I woke just before dawn yesterday morning. I’m not an early riser. The birds hadn’t even begun to chirp. Yet here I was, wide awake. I made a cup of coffee and took it out to my front porch to experience the beginning of the day. As I took my first sip, I noticed a faint ribbon of pink just above the eastern hills, gradually growing brighter. Looking directly overhead, I saw that the sky had gone from dusky gray to light blue graced by soft clouds. When I looked down again, a whole palette of color was lighting the sky—pale gold, coral, robin’s egg blue, soft lavender. And as if to acknowledge the coming of another day, the birds woke and began their morning chorus.
I let myself drink in the peace of it. The world has been such a brutal place these last few weeks, its violence and mayhem loud and sickening. Yet here I was, enveloped in birdsong and sunrise, sipping freshly brewed coffee. I felt lucky, and grateful, and kind of humbled to be so blessed.
I paused to do a few rounds of loving-kindness meditation, and as I sent wishes for well-being, peace and happiness to friends and acquaintances, to my community, to my region, to my nation, and then to all sentient beings with whom I share the globe, I realized that more of us are living unscathed by mayhem at the moment than are directly touched by it.
Most of us live our ordinary lives, attending to our daily routines and chores, relating in our usual ways with families and coworkers and friends. We share our smiles, and sometimes our tears. We share our rituals, our news, our opinions, our gossip. We play together. We squabble. We make up. All of us. All over the world. And isn’t that beautiful!
That we can go on, determined to live ordinary lives in the face of extraordinary times, is remarkable.
I came across a couple observations by American historian and professor Howard Zinn this week. He said:
“To be hopeful in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty, but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness.
What we choose to emphasize in this complex history will determine our lives. If we see only the worst, it destroys our capacity to do something. If we remember those times and places—and there are so many—where people have behaved magnificently, this gives us the energy to act, and at least the possibility of sending this spinning top of a world in a different direction. “
I get the impression that Zinn is thinking of acts of high bravery and daring when he talks about how magnificently we can behave. And indeed we can. But I think courage is more than the extraordinary act performed at great risk. I think it’s also the determination to go on living ordinary lives as well as we can even when the world seems mad. The acts of compassion, and sacrifice and kindness can be tiny ones as well, consistently performed despite it all.
Mark Twain had this to say about courage: “Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear – not absence of fear. Except a creature be part coward it is not a compliment to say it is brave.”
When we live our ordinary lives in the face of what seems almost omnipresent violence and rage, we are being brave. By refusing to surrender to fear, however loudly and persistently the media screams about atrocities, we tell the world it cannot take the best of us. We will behave magnificently, holding to the dignity of our ordinary lives. And sometimes pausing to recognize that despite it all, we are surrounded by extraordinary goodness and beauty, and, sometimes, bathed in moments of transcendent peace.
Wishing you a week of brave, wonderful, ordinary life.
Warmly,
Susan
Image by Hervé Lagrange from Pixabay