Poem: The washing never gets done

The washing never gets done.
The furnace never gets heated.
Books never get read.
Life is never completed.
Life is like a ball which one must continually
catch and hit so that it won’t fall.
When the fence is repaired at one end,
it collapses at the other. The roof leaks,
the kitchen door won’t close, there are cracks in the foundation,
the torn knees of children’s pants …
One can’t keep everything in mind. The wonder is
that beside all this one can notice
the spring which is so full of everything
continuing in all directions – into evening clouds,
into the redwing’s song and into every
drop of dew on every blade of grass in the meadow,
as far as the eye can see, into the dusk.  

            Jaan Kaplinski

 

 

 

 

 

Sink or swim

To live or to be alive or, what is the same thing, to be a man,
does not admit of any preparations or preliminary experiments.
Life is fired at us point blank. ...
Where and when we are born,
or happen to find ourselves after we were born,
there and then, like it or not, we must sink or swim.

        José Ortega y Gasset Man and People 

 

 

 

 

 

Out of control

If you can control your emotions,
    chances are you don’t have too many.

            Douglas Coupland, JPod

 

 

 

 

Fake consolation

Almost anything that consoles us is a fake.

        Iris Murdoch, The Sovereignty of Good 

 

 

 

 

 

Just listen

Whatever life we have experienced,
if we can tell our story to someone who listens,
we find it easier to deal with our circumstances.

        Margaret Wheatley, Turning to One Another 

 

 

 

 

On the verge

I feel as if I'm always on the verge of waking up.

     Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet

 

 

 

 

Ultimate concern

We define religion as the assumption that life has meaning. Religion, or lack of it, is shown not in some intellectual or verbal formulations but in one's total orientation to life. Religion is whatever the individual takes to be his ultimate concern. One's religious attitude is to be found at that point where he has a conviction that there are values in human existence worth living and dying for. 

Rollo May, Man's Search for Himself