Befores and Afters
“Tell your heart that the fear of suffering is worse than the suffering itself (130).” I have just finished “The Alchemist.” The fear of the unknown is worse than the unknown itself. The words of Thich Nhat Hanh come back to me again, “Hold your fear like a baby, examine it, hold it close, know it, recognize it, love it. Then let it go.” When I know my fear I see that it is not really fear at all, but a part of the knowledge. And knowing is loving. “Darling, let me know you.”[1] “We forgive ourselves, and each other; we beginning again in love.”
“When you want something, all the universe conspires in helping you to achieve it.”[2] Thoughts float back to me and my life feels divided into befores and afters. I struggle still with the integration of my existence. Do I see this disease as a test? As a lesson or a challenge to overcome? Do I see this as a burden? Less and less as a burden as my health returns and I commit to life as I never could have if I had not felt death. “Usually the threat of death makes people a lot more aware of their lives.”[3]
And when I cease to see it as a disease, but merely as a part of the continuum of health and life, I see it as part of the whole. As everything is one part of the same. “To see a world in a grain of sand/Heaven in a wildflower/Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand/And eternity in an hour.”[4]
Words fall into me from junior high poetry collections where I accompanied that poem with a colored pencil picture of the earth surrounded by a yellow cuboidal grain of sand. Words come from lectures, from songs, from poems, from books. They conspire to integrate themselves into the present. Into my now and out of the befores and afters.
The before the diagnosis of lupus words prepared me for the during, and even more for the after. The after which was already then. And which is always now. I remember the deconstructionist lectures in college, how I struggled with the concepts but once grasped how they seemed so simple. So obviously clear that I learned that I already saw the world through them, as through cleansed "doors of perceptions.”[5]
I feel that way now in part with “The Alchemist.” I found myself predicting the words on the next page, as Coehlo relayed his message in the language of the world. I knew how it would end before it began because it is part of the stories of our existence. It is a hero’s quest, like King Arthur, like Harry Potter, like Jesus Christ. A tale of searching for self and finding it in the very place where you have begun—finding the after in the before, and finding both in the now. “We will arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.”[6] Over and over we will. “I carry your heart (I carry it in my heart).”[7]
Over and over I am reminded to do this, like the omens. “It is always only ever now,” I heard it complementary medicine when I thought my world was ending with a love that was never truly mine anyway. Words calling me back to center of myself. Sometimes they fall without meaning and later the same words rush back in moments of intense suffering and need, having waited for the longing and the mind reaching for wholeness in the eternity they convey. I see also that there is a profundity beyond all words, beyond all the books conspiring together. I see that the most infinitely wise words are never committed to paper because there comes a time when the confines of letters and footnotes and covers of books become limiting: the letting go of the words becomes the lesson. When the hoarding of thoughts and the desire to imbue them unto others becomes less important than the fact that thoughts exist, realizing that others must find their own words—their own Personal Legend. And that when words reach that level of knowing, they no longer need to be written, only known, understood, loved.
[1] Lecture, Hanh
[2] “The Alchemist” Paulo Coelo, page 40
[3] “The Alchemist” Paulo Coelho, page 142
[4] Auguries of Innocence, William Blake
[5] The Mairrage of Heaven and Hell, William Blake
[6] Little Gidding, T. S. Eliot
[7] I carry your heart e. e. cummings
“When you want something, all the universe conspires in helping you to achieve it.”[2] Thoughts float back to me and my life feels divided into befores and afters. I struggle still with the integration of my existence. Do I see this disease as a test? As a lesson or a challenge to overcome? Do I see this as a burden? Less and less as a burden as my health returns and I commit to life as I never could have if I had not felt death. “Usually the threat of death makes people a lot more aware of their lives.”[3]
And when I cease to see it as a disease, but merely as a part of the continuum of health and life, I see it as part of the whole. As everything is one part of the same. “To see a world in a grain of sand/Heaven in a wildflower/Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand/And eternity in an hour.”[4]
Words fall into me from junior high poetry collections where I accompanied that poem with a colored pencil picture of the earth surrounded by a yellow cuboidal grain of sand. Words come from lectures, from songs, from poems, from books. They conspire to integrate themselves into the present. Into my now and out of the befores and afters.
The before the diagnosis of lupus words prepared me for the during, and even more for the after. The after which was already then. And which is always now. I remember the deconstructionist lectures in college, how I struggled with the concepts but once grasped how they seemed so simple. So obviously clear that I learned that I already saw the world through them, as through cleansed "doors of perceptions.”[5]
I feel that way now in part with “The Alchemist.” I found myself predicting the words on the next page, as Coehlo relayed his message in the language of the world. I knew how it would end before it began because it is part of the stories of our existence. It is a hero’s quest, like King Arthur, like Harry Potter, like Jesus Christ. A tale of searching for self and finding it in the very place where you have begun—finding the after in the before, and finding both in the now. “We will arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.”[6] Over and over we will. “I carry your heart (I carry it in my heart).”[7]
Over and over I am reminded to do this, like the omens. “It is always only ever now,” I heard it complementary medicine when I thought my world was ending with a love that was never truly mine anyway. Words calling me back to center of myself. Sometimes they fall without meaning and later the same words rush back in moments of intense suffering and need, having waited for the longing and the mind reaching for wholeness in the eternity they convey. I see also that there is a profundity beyond all words, beyond all the books conspiring together. I see that the most infinitely wise words are never committed to paper because there comes a time when the confines of letters and footnotes and covers of books become limiting: the letting go of the words becomes the lesson. When the hoarding of thoughts and the desire to imbue them unto others becomes less important than the fact that thoughts exist, realizing that others must find their own words—their own Personal Legend. And that when words reach that level of knowing, they no longer need to be written, only known, understood, loved.
[1] Lecture, Hanh
[2] “The Alchemist” Paulo Coelo, page 40
[3] “The Alchemist” Paulo Coelho, page 142
[4] Auguries of Innocence, William Blake
[5] The Mairrage of Heaven and Hell, William Blake
[6] Little Gidding, T. S. Eliot
[7] I carry your heart e. e. cummings
posted by S. at 11:38 PM
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