Because It Ends
from Sunday Morning, Wallace Stevens She says, “I am content when wakened birds, Before they fly, test the reality Of misty fields, by their sweet questionings; But when the birds are gone, and their warm fields Return no more, where, then, is paradise?” There is not any haunt of prophecy, Nor any old chimera of the grave, Neither the golden underground, nor isle Melodious, where spirits gat them home, Nor visionary south, nor cloudy palm Remote on heaven’s hill, that has endured As April’s green endures; or will endure Like her remembrance of awakened birds, Or her desire for June and evening, tipped By the consummation of the swallow’s wings.,, She says, “But in contentment I still feel The need of some imperishable bliss.” Death is the mother of beauty; hence from her, Alone, shall come fulfilment to our dreams And our desires.
Kafka said, or so it is said of Kafka, the meaning of life is that it ends. I think about my youth, my teenage days that seemed endlessly strung out before me. There was so much time and energy to be had. Or so it seemed. I could contend with life, take it on, get to know the meaning of my own personal existence. Yet even then I think I knew the truth of this wisdom, even if I couldn’t exactly have named it. Live it because it ends. Savor it because it ends. Know it because it ends. There is no meaning in an artificial flower, the poet Wallace Stevens reminds. A flower is beautiful because it is real, and because it is real it will die.
And so, this is the great walk with story, I think. We make a story because eventually there will be no story. We tell the story so that perhaps some part of it will endure, the beautiful within the perishable.
This has been one of the truths of my study of il dolce far niente this summer. The sweetness of doing nothing is sweet because it, too, ends. Savor, savor, savor, the Italian philosophy seems to be singing to me. Savor the meal, the conversation, the sunrise, the sunset. Savor the face before you, the hands on the table, the smile, the laugh. Savor the garden, the flower, the tree. Savor the teenager jumping in giant waves and the old person in their bed. Savor the body, the breath, the creation, the bird before it flies, the misty field before the sun. Savor the August evenings, the starry nights, the warmth, the last fireflies.
Two weeks ago I shared a story of a man who has given me many stories, a man we thought was dying that weekend. He has not died, and that is a wild and spectacular thing. Yet, he will, and so will every other complicated loved one who’s given me stories of their own. It’s so easy to forget this in the daily rush and busy, in the daily disagreements and grudges, in the hard edges that tighten around hearts when we’re strangled by fears and opinions and half-truths, internet news and personal agendas. Yet in those moments when we gathered around him, it was a gathering of people savoring stories. Nothing more or less.
Recently, at a training I was attending for my kids’ school, one of the women leading said that in this program we are encouraged to teach our students how to engage in debate not to win or to make some individual point; rather, we engage in debate to get closer to the truth together.
All of this has been percolating in me as I’ve listened to the intensity of political discord and fears for the future rising into dinner conversations and gatherings with family and friends. And the truth as I know it is, these opinions, these particular desires, these particular anxieties, will end. They are not the whole truth. Yet, what if those opinions are all I keep noticing, rather than the heart that is beating with a story that is richer and more complex than any one singular and particular opinion?
Nervous system overload, that’s what happens, and a remembrance of how I felt 4 years ago listening to people I love engage in a vehement positioning that leaves me asking, how do we get at some kind of truth, together?
I don’t have a particular answer for you, but for me it lives in all that ends. Death is the mother of beauty, after all. So I am trying, hard as it is, to hear stories not opinions. To wake up to see the sunrise and to watch as the colors and light change. To breathe in these last beach days with teens. To stand still in gardens and take in the flowers on a walk. To sit at dinner tables and drink in faces as we savor together last summer tomatoes and sweet corn.
What will endure beyond this particular time? What is permanent in this impermanence? Yoga has tried to teach me, but life has taught me better—life is meaningful because it ends. That is a truth we must all get at together.
“A garden submits to the limits and boundaries of a good creation, for neither human strength nor summer warmth is unending. Yet each can be and will be renewed.” ~Christie Purifoy
The British actress, film-maker, and poet, Michaela Coel was the first black woman to win an Emmy for Outstanding Writing. In her acceptance speech she said this: “In a world that entices us to browse through the lives of others…[and] to be constantly visible for visibility these days seems to somehow equate to success, do not be afraid to disappear, from it, from us, for a while and see what comes to you in the silence.”
May it be so, friends. May you pause today to be still, to breathe deeply, to recenter your scattered senses on an awareness greater than your small self.
I’ve been traveling to visit family in New England this week, and so there was no yoga practice these two Sundays. I’ll return with that next week. For now, some end of summer days and beach miracle moments. All this, too, beautiful because it has an ending.
