Writing about the creative life and the stories all around us
listen to this poem here:
You say the sun is always there.
Above, only sullen nimbus grey.
My left hand grasps at shadows
right hand trapped by work’s iron fist
behind, a thousand tiny ties bound to the past
below, soul-sucking mud swallows every step
hateful reality burns down my dreams.
But you say, keep going
I’m doing great, so tell me
will I see the sun again
do you promise?
Have you ever loved someone and it didn’t work out?
You tried, they tried, but ultimately you parted company. Then you were left to either heal a broken heart, or hide your relief at escaping something that had lost its shine.
When that happens a few times, you start to wonder whether love is all it’s cracked up to be.
Love is supposed to be our ultimate goal.
Most of us chase it all our lives, and sometimes even find it. But in the nature of these things, finding and keeping is not the same thing. There are different kinds of love of course, but our culture puts romantic love top of the list.
We act as though love is forever and yet we know it is not. We enter into contracts and exchange rings that symbolise an unending circle. And we quietly build exits and escape clauses in the form of prenuptial agreements, running away money, and the number of a good lawyer, just in case.
The Matrix Revolutions argued everything that has a beginning has an end. Why should love be the exception? Maybe as you lick your wounds from your last battle with forever, you ask yourself, “Is love ever a mistake?”
A few people get lucky, but most of us contend with detours and blind alleys before we find The One — if we ever do. That holds true whether we seek love or a life purpose or something else of value. Winning the ultimate prize is like running a maze with no idea if a solution exists, or if a lifetime is long enough to find it.
Why keep running when success seems more elusive than a lottery win?
Life can only be understood backwards, but it must be lived forwards.
Søren Kierkegaard
You can’t know how your life will work out down the road when you can’t see the whole map. Perhaps there are no mistakes, only progress you can’t yet recognise.
When things seem to be going wrong, think of it as taking an unexpected turn on the road of life — a plot twist, if you like. Once made, your footprints can’t be erased anyway. We can’t change our past; we can only make peace with it.
With this in mind, look back at past experiences and take what can be learned from them. Some loves are like flowers; beautiful and doomed, and all the more precious because they are ephemeral.
But even more precious than love itself is the capacity to feel love not once, but many times. To have that opportunity, you need to draw on hope.
Hope encourages you to try again and trust that you’re making progress. Hope might lack the certainty of faith, but it persists even in the face of disappointment. Hope keeps you going.
Pandora found that when all is lost, hope is the tiny flame that lights up the darkness. And the deeper the darkness, the brighter it shines.
Hope can be a powerful force. Maybe there’s no actual magic in it, but when you know what you hope for most and hold it like a light within you, you can make things happen, almost like magic.
Laini Taylor
when you fall a thousand times
weeping blood tears
when love lies bitter on your tongue
and fear storms every barricade
when you are once more alone
abandoned
lost
only hope will bind your wounds
and whisper
I am still here
take my hand,
rise again.
better to hope than to love
Love. It’s the greatest good we have as humans. Most of us chase it all our lives, and sometimes even find it. But in the nature of these things, finding and keeping is not the same thing. I wrote elsewhere about different kinds of love, but romantic love is the one the songs, films and books mostly hold up as the ultimate.
We say love is forever and yet we know it is not. We enter into contracts and exchange rings that symbolise an unending circle. And we quietly build exits and escape clauses.
We hope and pray that love will last, but objectively everything that has a beginning has an end, as The Matrix Revolutions had it. It was a remark by Jake Lira of @thecreative.cafe that got me wondering about the wrong turns and detours we make in search of The One. He asked: is love ever a mistake?
Perhaps there are no mistakes, only progress we can’t see at the time.
Life can only be understood backwards, but it must be lived forwards.
Søren Kierkegaard
If we look at life this way, it gives us some hope. When things seem to be going wrong, we are simply taking an unexpected turn on the road of life. Those footprints cannot be erased anyway. We can’t deny our past; we can only make peace with it.
With this in mind, we are able to look back at past experiences and take what can be learned from them. Some loves are like flowers; beautiful and doomed, and all the more precious because they are ephemeral. What we should treasure is not this idea of romantic love, in whichever way we live it, but the capacity to feel love not once, but many times.
As long as we are able to try again, the possibility of grasping love remains. And the emotion that keeps us going in its absence is hope.
Hope. It is the quintessential human delusion, simultaneously the source of your greatest strength, and your greatest weakness.
The Architect, The Matrix Reloaded (2003) The Wachowskis
As Pandora found, when all is lost, hope is the tiny flame that lights the darkness. And the deeper the dark, the brighter it shines.
We can gaze at the night sky and marvel at the constellations. But sometimes brilliant stars can be found in the daytime too. All photos taken in my garden.
There is something about the combination of spring green and white that lifts my spirits. It is hope and possibility and a fresh start. It is the promise fulfilled, Demeter rejoicing at Persephone’s return, the reward for enduring winter. Now, past the balancing point of the equinox, gardens are truly awake.
I look out at young growth everywhere and know that despite everything, the seasons turn. Birds will sing, flowers will bloom, fruit will come in time.
Last time, I talked about how new beginnings can come from what seems like disaster. In the space cleared by the end of one idea, another may find the space and light it needs to germinate and grow. Sometimes, an idea (or a thing, which is just an idea made concrete) has a limited life span. It flourishes for a while and then disappears when its job is done. Its beauty lies in its temporary nature. Isn’t that the glory of flowers?
Gardeners know the turn of the seasons, and that few deaths are final. We bury our plants in the compost heap, and they nourish new life. Sometimes they are born again, in unseen seeds that burst into triumphant life.
Mourning what is past is both necessary and healthy, as long as it doesn’t replace the act of moving forward again. When winter grips the garden, and it is but an array of brown empty earth, dead stems, or snow-huddled mounds, it’s easy to think that this is a permanent state. But it is just a phase; it’s not permanent.
Whether you know it or not, life lies below the surface, waiting for the right moment to emerge. Those first green shoots are tender yet they are the toughest, willing to push out of cold soil into chilly air or even snow. They are the most precious, because they are eagerly awaited signs that the spring is coming, and with them comes the promise of better days. But to get there, a winter must be endured.
The only way to avoid grief is to never love.
The only way to avoid endings is to never say hello.
The only way out of life is to push through its many winters.
The only way through winter is to push out again, to risk exposure, to seek the sun.
