By Blake AdamsonSometimes our lives feel meaningless and full of darkness, like we’re dropping endlessly into a hole. Other times, our lives are too bright, like looking directly into a spotlight, revealing all our flaws and insecurities to the world, most of all to ourselves.
In these times, compassion is our greatest weapon. Not a sword in hand, but a branch held in the beak of a dove – a symbol of mercy and of new beginnings. It’s a lesson worth learning again.
Even when we are alone, we are not abandoned as long as there are people who can reach out to each other, who can give grace to one another, who remind us where hope lives and helps us put away the childish things of self-aggrandizing delusion and self-pity.
Those who say “I hear you” and see past our flaws and potential and see us as people wanting love and recognition for who we are rather than any fallacy or fantasy we try to project onto ourselves, see us as human beings to remind us that we are worth cherishing.
Our past is dark and full of wild horrors. But in that wilderness we can still see glimmers of natural beauty and the bonds we wish to see more of, patterns of humanity that can help us see the worth in ourselves.
The people in my life, who hear my words, who have given me even hard truths and wake up calls….They are those people. They and many others. And I thank them.
There can be people like that in your life too. All you need is to look, to listen, and to feel.
| Copyright © 2020 by Blake Adamson Blake Adamson is an aspiring writer who has written for fanzine blogs and maintains fandom-related blogs on both Tumblr and Archive of Our Own. He currently lives in Jefferson City, Missouri, with his family while trying to complete a novel or novella-length story, a feat which he compares to passing kidney stones. |
Blake, had you shared this writing with Mr. Biden? In his acceptance speech last night, he seemed to echo it:
ReplyDeleteHe told them: “I know the deep black hole that opens up in your chest — that you feel your whole being is sucked into it. I know how mean and cruel and unfair life can be sometimes.” And, he said, “The best way through pain and loss and grief is to find purpose.”
[From Frank Bruni’s column in the NY Times: “With the Speech of His Life, Joe Biden Becomes the Man for This Moment .”]
I hear you Blake. Loud and clear.
ReplyDeleteOnce again well done! The clarity of your thoughts are far reaching and character changing.
ReplyDeleteThanks for sharing.
Dylan Thomas once said "Poetry teaches us our troubles and our joys are forever shared and forever all our own."
ReplyDeleteI salute your compassionate words. They are a great comfort and a blessing to me and others.
The Force is strong in one so young, Grasshopper.
ReplyDelete