Today (Response to Liz)

Since I need prompting, I've joined a 30-day challenge, #Trust30 on Twitter. I'll take any help I can get, of course I have to act on the help I receive. Liz's post asks me who am I today, in one sentence?

My answer is: I am happy and confident.

If I were to say more than one sentence, or why I would say that sentence, those words out loud, write them, it's because I know I'm not alone. I know I'm loved. I know I can be useful. I know I have work to do. I know I have inner resources. And I know I have priorities. I am at the beginning of something amazing, and not knowing, watching things unfold, even as I move within it, doing what little I can, but always taking action.

Rhere have been times when I've dreaded the day that comes with no escape, when I would have to do what I said I would, take a trip, move, face disruption, face reckoning. Can I live daily with some feeling of urgency, without the desperation, without the dread, with gratitude, not from fear but from purpose, as Mastin teaches.


And for me there is usually an undertone of anxiety or uneasiness which I need to learn to be with and then take action. Years ago I worked briefly with a man named Jose who said, to my incredulity, no harm can come to you, they can hurt you, they can kill you, you're still you. I don't know if my saying that to someone else will give that person comfort, but I am a small part of something far greater than me that will take care of me, that I matter and don't matter, am responsible for what I can change and powerless over what I cannot change.


And I am grateful. Perhaps not at every instant, I am not conscious every instant. When I consider the landscape of my life, where my feet have walked, where my body has stood, sat and lay down and risen up again, the greater part of my life has been and continues to be unmerited gifts.


Today I have work to do for my new job, work that demands my attention, meeting with my counselor who always starts me off with relaxation and a smile, and time with my children whose company I enjoy even if they are not always enjoying one another.


On my way to the interview for the job I was eventually offered and accepted, on the highway, I found myself following a cement mixer with the word "Advance," on the back. It became my word for the day and I found what I needed from within and I know not from whence it came and I am still advancing. And happy and confident.

"Te taire"

From Voltaire, Candide, http://www.literature.org/authors/voltaire/candide/chapter-30.html

In the neighborhood lived a famous dervish who passed for the best philosopher in Turkey; they went to consult him: Pangloss, who was their spokesman, addressed him thus:
"Master, we come to entreat you to tell us why so strange an animal as man has been formed?"
"Why do you trouble your head about it?" said the dervish; "is it any business of yours?"
"But, Reverend Father," said Candide, "there is a horrible deal of evil on the earth."
"What signifies it," said the dervish, "whether there is evil or good? When His Highness sends a ship to Egypt does he trouble his head whether the rats in the vessel are at their ease or not?"
"What must then be done?" said Pangloss.
"Be silent," answered the dervish.

(I believe in the original the dervish says "te taire," which could be translated as "shut up!")

Then they go on to meet a gardener, who says he doesn't mind what happens in the kingdom but cultivates his garden the best he can. And maybe that is the best I can do. I am not in charge of what I am not in charge, and usually I do not know what's best.

Shh/peaceful

Tragic sense of life

Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow
creeps in this petty pace from day to day
and all our yesterdays have lighted fools the way to dusky death
Out, out, brief candle-
life's but a walking shadow,
a poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage
and then is heard no more.
It is a tale told by an idiot,
full of sound and fury,
signifying nothing.

Shakespeare, MacBeth

I don't know where I was sitting or what I was thinking when MacBeth's speech came to me. It happens in the drama after he is alerted that Lady MacBeth is dead, and then he says something like "that's all we need now." It's a powerful, tragic speech, which combines the monotony of life in the first lines (petty pace from day to day,) a cumulative effect ("all our yesterdays," fatalism ("to dusky death" "heard no more",) fleeting quality of life ("walking shadow" "hour" "no more",) senselessness ("tale told by an idiot" "signifying nothing") and violence ("sound and fury"), the latter of which the play is especially about. It's ironic also that the player metaphor is used within the play, which is not unusual with the Bard.

Compare with Ecclesiastes:
"all is vanity.
What profit hath a man of all his labor which he taketh under the sun? ...
The wise man's eyes are in his head; but the fool walketh in darkness: and I myself perceived also that one event happeneth to them all. ... Yea, I hated all my labor which I had taken under the sun: because I should leave it unto the man that shall be after me."

and also:
"And I gave my heart to know wisdom, and to know madness and folly: I perceived that this also is vexation of spirit.

For in much wisdom is much grief: and he that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow."

However, Ecclesiastes says eat and drink up and be merry, for life is short. No such small comfort for MacBeth.

I don't know.