I loved this: "avoiding despair can be a form of positive action. And, for me, writing a little every day is one of my best ways of fighting back against despair. Sometimes, yes, it feels like a guilty pleasure (“Why am I making up a theme park when the world is going all to hell?”) But, in a way, it’s like, you know, eating, or bathing:…
I loved this: "avoiding despair can be a form of positive action. And, for me, writing a little every day is one of my best ways of fighting back against despair. Sometimes, yes, it feels like a guilty pleasure (“Why am I making up a theme park when the world is going all to hell?”) But, in a way, it’s like, you know, eating, or bathing: it might not save the world but 1) it’s not making it worse and 2) it’s putting my heart into fighting shape, should a fight arise in which I can actually make a difference."
My father wrote a book called the 'Look of Distance - Reflections on Suffering and Sympathy in Modern Literature'. He died before the internet but I want him to be part of this conversation, so I'm sharing some of his words. In his introduction he wrote: "...the debate is about whether the reading and teaching of literature can be decent occupations in a universe so much ordered by suffering as this one and about the appropriateness of various responses to suffering--by authors, fictional characters, and readers.... it is about whether in my reading and teaching I am performing something ugly, voyeuristic, and evasive or am doing one of the best and least harmful things I know how to do."
I decided when in college that I couldn't be a world leader and save the world or even part of it, but I could be nice to the people around me, and in writing (and reading) fiction, it is important to me that there be a glimmer of hope somewhere no matter how dark the material. I am continually inspired by the memoir of a holocaust survivor who was a child in a concentration camp. I don't remember her actual words, but one day in the camp, she walked past a beautiful tree and she saw the beauty of the tree and was glad of it.
Perhaps you are remembering the story of the woman and the tree from Victor Frankl's "Man's Search for Meaning." Here it is, in part: Through that window she could see just one branch of a chestnut tree, and on the branch were two blossoms. "I often talk to this tree," she said to me. I was startled and didn't quite know how to take her words. Was she delirious? Did she have occasional hallucinations? Anxiously I asked her if the tree replied. "Yes." What did it say to her? She answered, "It said to me, 'I am here-I am here-I am life, eternal life.”
Joan and questioner, you have indeed asked exactly the question that I have continued to try to understand by writing and by reading, and in this setting. And as an elder, with children and grandchildren, I am grateful for all the responses generated. I especially am nourished by the generosity of how gathering resources for fighting despair is enough. Most of the time.
There are also stories of people in the camps who, despite being starved themselves, shared their meagre food with others, and of people there getting married.
I loved this: "avoiding despair can be a form of positive action. And, for me, writing a little every day is one of my best ways of fighting back against despair. Sometimes, yes, it feels like a guilty pleasure (“Why am I making up a theme park when the world is going all to hell?”) But, in a way, it’s like, you know, eating, or bathing: it might not save the world but 1) it’s not making it worse and 2) it’s putting my heart into fighting shape, should a fight arise in which I can actually make a difference."
My father wrote a book called the 'Look of Distance - Reflections on Suffering and Sympathy in Modern Literature'. He died before the internet but I want him to be part of this conversation, so I'm sharing some of his words. In his introduction he wrote: "...the debate is about whether the reading and teaching of literature can be decent occupations in a universe so much ordered by suffering as this one and about the appropriateness of various responses to suffering--by authors, fictional characters, and readers.... it is about whether in my reading and teaching I am performing something ugly, voyeuristic, and evasive or am doing one of the best and least harmful things I know how to do."
I decided when in college that I couldn't be a world leader and save the world or even part of it, but I could be nice to the people around me, and in writing (and reading) fiction, it is important to me that there be a glimmer of hope somewhere no matter how dark the material. I am continually inspired by the memoir of a holocaust survivor who was a child in a concentration camp. I don't remember her actual words, but one day in the camp, she walked past a beautiful tree and she saw the beauty of the tree and was glad of it.
Perhaps you are remembering the story of the woman and the tree from Victor Frankl's "Man's Search for Meaning." Here it is, in part: Through that window she could see just one branch of a chestnut tree, and on the branch were two blossoms. "I often talk to this tree," she said to me. I was startled and didn't quite know how to take her words. Was she delirious? Did she have occasional hallucinations? Anxiously I asked her if the tree replied. "Yes." What did it say to her? She answered, "It said to me, 'I am here-I am here-I am life, eternal life.”
Gosh, that gave me goose bumps, Mary.
Hi Richard. Yes, it's so very powerful.
Thanks Mary G. It's not the one I remembered but I like it. Talking to trees is always good.
Joan and questioner, you have indeed asked exactly the question that I have continued to try to understand by writing and by reading, and in this setting. And as an elder, with children and grandchildren, I am grateful for all the responses generated. I especially am nourished by the generosity of how gathering resources for fighting despair is enough. Most of the time.
There are also stories of people in the camps who, despite being starved themselves, shared their meagre food with others, and of people there getting married.