Make It A Soul

“Do you not see how necessary a world of pains and troubles is to school an intelligence and make it a soul?”
John Keats (1795-1821);
English poet

     I came across this quote this morning.  I am not sure why it immediately resonated with me but it certainly did.  Perhaps it is because Keats offers justification for pains and troubles in our world.  When heartache, grief, despair, or discouragement enter into the frame that is our life, then we become more complete, more real, less broken.  We have greater depth on which to draw in our drive to understand who and why we are.  Perhaps the pain and trouble that can so thoroughly cloud our days can take ahold of our minds.  Perhaps that pain and sorrow  can  bend our minds and transform them into souls with magnitude, passion and grace, souls that rewards us with wisdom and understanding?

Be Curious

     About a year ago I wrote a post about surprises.  The gist of that piece was that there is a season for everything and maybe surprises only come early in life.  Good surprises, that is.  Bad surprises come all the time but the stuff that influences the path in a positive and life changing way seems to happen in the first two thirds of life.  When I wrote about the humdrum of grownup life,  I was mired in the middle of malaise.  No where to go but to work and to the couch.  At work, I had to be on my game, the one who could/would make decisions and take care of everyone and their issues.  The couch was made more comfortable by drugs of choice (books, writing, thinking and an evening glass of wine) but all that work and the couch were not changing anything.  No surprises.  No novelty to life.

    I'm not saying it's a whole lot different now.  I still find it hard to believe that something good could surprise me at this point.  Too many people say to me, "Wait until you have grandchildren.  They are the best surprise you can imagine."  First, I assure you, I am in NO rush to have grandchildren.  It's okay if they never show up but I also don't want my kids becoming parents anytime in the next five years.  They need more time to figure out who they are before they become parents.  There have been changes in my work world but those have been a blend of fun (the addition of small children to the campus) and painful (the loss of my partner in crime).  Life among family members hasn't varied too dramatically - except for Mark's fantastic re-emergence.   In other words, life seems to be rolling along and I am still looking for passion, adventure, and a little weirdness.

     Just recently, however, I find some piece of hope happening.  I am learning to draw a box around some moments and then just stand outside the box and be curious.  I don't know what to expect while watching the box but perhaps there is transformation on the horizon.  One can only be curious.

I was in Times Square a couple of years ago and could not ignore this marquee for a Eugene O'Neill production.....