The Thing with Feathers

Life and Hope. Heavy subjects. Heaviness abounds. Not for one person, or a few people, or even many people. I venture to say most are feeling this heaviness to some degree or another. Whether due to direct experience or as it oozes over from a neighbor. Inescapable.

I have lately felt the heaviness of my own situation, but today the shadow of someone else's burden eclipsed mine. This brought to mind ideas like the fragility of life, coping mechanisms, perspective, insecurity. I sometimes peruse collections of quotes to see if someone more brilliant than I has managed to articulate a particular situation or feeling perfectly. Here are a few quotes about life that spoke to me today:

• Maybe all one can do is hope to end up with the right regrets. -Arthur Miller
• We are born wet, naked, and hungry. Then things get worse. -Author Unknown
• Puritans will never believe it, but life is full of disagreeable things that aren't even good for you. -Mignon McLaughlin
• The art of living is more like wrestling than dancing. -Marcus Aurelius
• Expecting the world to treat you fairly because you are good is like expecting the bull not to charge because you are a vegetarian. -Dennis Wholey

Ok, those aren't very cheerful. Obviously, we are not the first in history to feel this heaviness in life. Maybe we could use some with a bit more "glass half full" emphasis:

• There are two means of refuge from the miseries of life: music and cats. -Albert Schweitzer
• Life's challenges are not supposed to paralyze you; they're supposed to help you discover who you are. -Bernice Johnson Reagon
• He who has a why to live can bear almost any how. -Friedrich Nietzsche
• Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. Life is either a daring adventure or nothing. -Helen Keller

Getting closer. Perhaps this isn't the right approach. Yes, life has a lot of suck in it. While much good and happiness do exist in every life, the dark heaviness often seems to overshadow. How do we deal? Cope? ...Let's try HOPE:

• Never deprive someone of hope; it might be all they have. - H. Jackson Brown, Jr.
• Do not spoil what you have by desiring what you have not; but remember that what you now have was once among the things you only hoped for. -Epicurus

Hope isn't something to seek and find. Hope is just there, ever present. Maybe some of us are better at recognizing it, seeing it, claiming it, feeding it. The most apt reference to hope I've found, as it relates to me and my experience is this simple verse penned by Emily Dickinson:

Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul.
And sings the tune
Without the words,
and never stops at all.