A quote which has given me a lot of comfort over the years, and to which I’ve been turning often of late:
My heart is at ease knowing that what was meant for me will never miss me, and what misses me was never meant for me.
Imam al-Shafi’i
Tag: heart
Ready to burst into flame at the merest enkindling.
Writing from the Heart
Writing from the mind? Well enough. But writing from the heart is another thing altogether.
Writing from the heart means facing down the feelings that threaten to overwhelm. It means sitting with the uncomfortable sense of being plunged into darkness with only a thin beam of light to guide the way.
The writing that comes from the heart is sturdy, stirring, true, and good. But it isn’t easily obtained. Indeed, the person wishing to write such material is often asked to evince a certain fearlessness – a reckless disregard, even, for that most precious commodity, his ego.
To write from the heart, a writer must strip himself to the bone and deal unflinchingly with what he sees. He must take it all in – the good, the bad, and the ugly – and seek to understand how it all hangs together, and what it means. Or perhaps he leaves the task of understanding aside, merely striving to reproduce what he has found, like an ornithologist recording in his log-book the movements of birds, except that he is recording the movements of human emotions: fear, sadness, anger, joy.
Is he up to the task? Is he armed with enough courage to walk through a landscape of his own human longing and regret?
His writing will reveal him. If he’s entered the depths and returned to tell the tale, his words will strike you with their sincerity, heft, and, quite possibly, beauty. For the heart, after all, doesn’t bother with trying to look perfect or funny or smart. It’s too busy feeling and loving and suffering the pangs of human experience – and there’s usually no room for artifice amidst all that.
Fear and Courage
Fear –
always upon me, catching my breath, making my stomach drop.
The stubborn fear that lingers and pervades.
The unspoken fear that haunts my dreams.
The insidious fear that complicates my soul.
The heartbreaking fear that makes me want to run to my room and cry.
All of these fears –
picked up and contaminating one another, trading secrets amongst themselves.
The fear-mongerers are sharing strategies for keeping me afraid. They know my buttons and how to push them – oh, so many ways.
The thing is – I’m not sure how to write about them. I’m daunted by the task.
See? Another fear.
It’s one fright after the next. You think you’ve eliminated one, and then five more spring up to take its place.
How to contain the fears? Is containment the wrong approach? Maybe slaughter is better? Or surrender? Or escape?
Chasing the fears away gets tiring. Maybe it’s best just to invite them in.
Oh, drat. Another fear! They never stop. Who knew I was a girl living with so many reasons for being afraid? It’s a wonder I can even get out of bed.
The best approach seems to be to keep things simple. Simple and wise. That’s the way for me.
Perhaps being fearless is not the thing to aim for. Perhaps the better thing – the more human thing – is to be afraid, but to do the thing your heart is calling you to do anyway. That’s where courage where comes in.
Courage – from the Latin cor, meaning “heart.” To be a person of courage is to be a person of heart. The valor of a deep-feeling heart can withstand many obstacles.
That means, the question is not – when will you stop being afraid? But rather – what will you do to ennoble your heart, making it big enough to accommodate your fears, but also wise enough to help you see when they’re leading you astray?
Once you begin to ignore their crooked counsels, you can finally set out toward becoming the person you’ve been longing to be.
Tiny Trio
More minuscule journal poems, dashed off in the blink of an eye.
Find a flower
the outshines the rest
with its loveliness –
and then you will know
what it’s like for me
to look at you.
…
If the mountains could move,
they would jump into the sea
in order to take a break
from being so tall.
…
Oh, the troubled heart
finds no relief
except in the wailing
and the gnashing of teeth.
Brief Thoughts (No. 3)
Will there ever be a time when I can stop trying? Or is that just the human condition, to ceaselessly strive?
…
The desire to rebel, to break loose, to act uninhibitedly – is just a reflection of the desire to be really and truly human. It’s evidence of the yearning to experience life fully and freely – not fearfully, fractionally, or in a cage.
…
How do you reach into the human heart and fix what is wounded? It is not a matter of making some sutures or replacing a valve. The mechanics of the operation are often unclear and ill-defined. Sometimes the patient lies on the operating table for months, or for years. If only such pains had a quick and pre-formulated repair. There would be far fewer hurting hearts. But, things being what they are, we have to make do – and if this means anything at all, know that, somewhere, someone is praying for you.
The only thing worth writing about is the human heart in conflict with itself.
William Faulkner