Looking for Balance

Trying to engage meaningfully in a world that pushes back

I know many of us are starting this week frustrated about the state of the world, something that often comes in tandem with a feeling of steady hopelessness. Of course every good thing will be paralleled by its opposite — as such is the duality of things — but right now it feels as if the world is a see-saw, one side hitting the floor. How can we make it levelled again, to recognise the weight of the good? It’s hard to tell. At the moment I think we’re all piled onto one side, desperately hoping that our combined weight will plunge things back into balance. It’s nothing we can avoid — it would take an impossible amount of effort to sit still in the middle, attempting not to affect either side. We are always constantly engaging.

Jane Hirshfield said in her On Being interview:

I have been given this existence, these years on this Earth, to accept what has come into my lifetime: wars, loves, trucks, betrayals, kindness. I must take them. I must find a way to live in this world. You can’t refuse it. And along with the difficult is the radiant, the beautiful, the scent of the herbs, the “cardamom, star anise, long pepper, cinnamon, hyssop” that cover all of the spices of the globe, and our hands, our 54 bones, our 10 fingers, the intimacy with which each one of us enters the life of all of us and takes what comes to our own door and figures out, what is our conversation? What is my responsibility? What must be suffered? What can be changed? What can I know? How can I meet this in a way which both lets me open my eyes the next day and also, perhaps, if I’m lucky, can be of service to a changed future?

I have always wanted to be someone who lived a consistent life — one of romance, of aesthetic pleasure, of passive enjoyment. If I complained or got impatient, I felt guilty for breaking the fragile glass box I hoped everyone had placed me in. My anxiety stemmed from the understanding that my frustrations couldn’t coexist with kindness, as if the progress I had made in my personal joy became invalid the moment a negative feeling arises. I think about the people in my life who I have never seen angry — where do they put their rage? Do they feel it at all? I wonder how it’s possible to engage with life so quietly. But in pushing down my anger, I’m betraying an inner self. I’ve always been told to be considerate of other people’s feelings, but what about my own? Isn’t it possible to be both angry and kind?

Naomi Shihab Nye writes in her seminal poem “Kindness”:

Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,
you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.
You must wake up with sorrow.
You must speak to it till your voice
catches the thread of all sorrows
and you see the size of the cloth.
Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore,
only kindness that ties your shoes
and sends you out into the day to gaze at bread,
only kindness that raises its head
from the crowd of the world to say
It is I you have been looking for,
and then goes with you everywhere
like a shadow or a friend.

To me, faith and hope are presented as two different things: hope being the expectation or desire for something that has yet to exist, and faith being the confidence in what already does. These days I have far more faith in hope, but I do believe faith and hopelessness can exist simultaneously. I have seen endless people offering resources and support to those who need it, who are fighting with compassion and solidarity. I have faith in them, knowing that they will make the best impact they possibly can under the circumstances. Hope is for something bigger, something that is difficult to fathom in this point in time, a miracle. But I have faith in the power of community. There’s not much we can do except keep moving. It’s up to us how we approach that task. Whatever way we choose, no matter how passive or active, I hope that we can do so with kindness and without apology.

Hirshfield continues:

I think part of that spiritual enlargening that we must find our way to, and I myself must continually, every day, find my way to, has to do with never feeling rage without feeling, equally, tenderness and kinship, because division is not going to be the path towards a viable planet or a viable social compact.

I can see the ways in which we fill the gaps in unity: through social media, meaningful interaction, and a resilience that keeps us moving despite defeat. Beyond all the storm clouds, the sun still shines somewhere.

Further Reading

“What Issa Heard” by David Budbill

“You See, I Want A Lot” by Rainer Maria Rilke

“Let Them Not Say” by Jane Hirshfield (A/N: Hirshfield, in an interview, referred to this collection of poems as “simply a call to be one more decibel in the chorus on the side of existence. Of course, that is activism and it is opposition, but it’s also support. It’s wanting to stand in solidarity with one another as human beings, and with the bats, with the bees, with the fish, with the trees”)

Resources

As a writer, I’m lucky enough to be able to tell my own story — thus I want to boost those of others who may not have the same opportunities. Below are some links to orginizations that work to amplify authentic and diverse female voices in order to shift the stigmas surrounding reproduction and abortion:

https://www.wetestify.org/comics

https://shoutyourabortion.com/abortion-stories/

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What I Enjoyed This Week

Recent Reads

• Exciting Times by Naoise Dolan. Honestly, I did not like this one. I thought it was dull. I liked the process of reading it, though. I finished it. So I would say I enjoyed it, even though I didn’t think it was very good. LOL.

• Eileen by Ottessa Moshfegh. This one I thought was very good. It’s more of a psychological thriller — and I do think Moshfegh’s writing should be classified as that rather than contemporary literary fiction — but the character study is so fantastic. A reaction to it envokes disgust, but it teeters on the edge of empathy throughout the book. Moshfegh writes female characters like a darker Elena Ferrante: raw and without shame. She, according to a well-written GoodReads review, “excels at crafting female characters who are sympathetic enough to warrant investment but abhorrent enough to shatter the conception that even the most contentious of antiheroines must above all else be likable.”

Other Wonderful Things

• I got to see a lot of people I love, went to a lot of places I love with them: bookstores, cafes, restaurants around my hometown that I’ve missed. Somehow everything feels more special in the summer.

• I have a Google Chrome extension that shows me a random Google Earth screenshot every time I open a new tab. I am often surprised and amazed at the intricacy of nature.

• This song, this song, and this song. Playlist

Take care of yourselves. I hope you can find a moment of tenderness this week.

<3

Tara