Translating the Ordinary

The constant dilemma: is it dangerous to wish? Is it dangerous to hope? It is human to hope, and yet, the experience of wanting something so badly that your insides turn upside-down and allowing yourself to hope (against hope) that such beauty will enter your life – only to have your dreams held just out of reach, never to materialize – is deeply painful and crushing to the soul.

Is it a matter of desiring wrongly? Of wanting and hoping for the wrong things? Or is it just that the world is broken, and even if you are hoping for the most beautiful and true of things, you’re not guaranteed the outcome you so long for – not in this lifetime, at least – because the messiness of life intervenes?

Who’s to say, definitively, once and for all, what is true? I struggle relentlessly with the sorting-out process: the separating of reality from fiction, of truth from untruth. I feel I am on slippery ground most of the time. Contradictory information abounds, and my mind short-circuits in its attempt to unify this great variety of inputs, trying and failing to find the truth in two opposing things.

And yet – reality is complex. For me, there are different levels of reality to contend with. There is the immediate, physical, rational, observable reality – easy enough to apprehend and generally agreed on by most people who have their senses intact. But then there is another reality – less immediate, perhaps – or at least having a less straightforward relationship to time. It is often invisible and gleaned through intuition, flashes of insight, and prayer. I don’t know how to describe such a reality except as a deep inner-knowingness, or as a communication between God and the soul.

And then there’s the fact that reality – of either sort – is not known to any of us in full. We’re always working with partial evidence. So how do we fill in the gaps with reasonable confidence when our side of the story is always incomplete? And how do we reconcile two apparently contradictory realities? How do we let our sense of a spiritual reality inform our understanding of the observable reality, and vice versa?

These questions make me dizzy, and yet I let them play through my mind again and again. I have no easy answers. All I have, really, is a tangle of words. Perhaps someone wiser than I will tidy them up and clear a path through all the mess.

To long for something – and to temper the spirit into a posture of discipline and waiting – is a difficult thing. Have you ever felt the welling-up of desire (for something good, something embedded in the deepest part of your heart), only to be asked to contain it so perfectly that no one would ever suspect that you were harboring such a powerful explosive in your chest?

This is the art of being balanced – of being a person of deep feeling and intense inclinations who is also tasked with functioning in the world. Perhaps you are such a person yourself – containing storms but struggling constantly with yourself to keep them in check and to present an equanimous face to the world.

This contest – between your deep-feeling nature and your longing for peace – presents a number of challenges. Most obvious among them is the sense of not knowing exactly who you are, since you’re often divided between these apparently contradictory modes of passion and poise. But another challenge that erupts, and frequently asks to be contended with, is the quandary of wanting to be a calm and stable person without sacrificing your capacity for profound feeling. How can you live peacefully and committedly in the world without numbing yourself to it? Is it possible to continue experiencing the high highs and the low lows of everyday existence – testing the limits of heartbreak and love and longing and faith and doubt and everything in between – while still being what you could consider a healthy and balanced person?

How does the artist tame his moods? How does the poet translate her depths of sorrow and anguish – preserving their beauty and fullness, understanding their nuances and the truths they impart – without losing the ability to show up for work, pay bills, raise a child, and take part in ordinary conversations about the weather, or taxes, or the price of eggs?

There must be some reconciling that happens – some agreement with God, or with the soul, that allows this double life to unfold. Do you agree to let the more romantic and turbulent parts of yourself escape only in appointed situations – for example, when you’re praying, or writing, or talking with a trusted friend, or sitting in your room alone? This arrangement seems practicable, if a little too segmented for my taste. Perhaps there is simply a time and a place for everything. The rules of etiquette, and of common sense, would suggest as much.

(Unfinished – to be continued.)