| How far you go in life depends on your being tender with the young, compassionate with the aged, sympathetic with the striving and tolerant of the weak and the strong. Because someday in life you will have been all of these. ~ George Washington Carver |
"Vicki felt empty and she imagined her chest cavity as literally empty. She imagined that, along with the cancer, Dr. Jason Emery has removed her capacity for getting things done, her good luck, and her happiness. She went to physical therapy; she went back to the psychotherapist.
She was better, yes. She was cancer-free, cured, a survivor. But she wasn't herself – and what was the point of getting better if her essential Vicki-ness had been lost? All her life, things had come easily. Now, the only thing that came easily was lying in bed and watching TV... she hated herself for it."Of the entire book, the final sentences (below) were – have become – my favorite. Recovery from any shock, depletion, illness, dilemma is awful at first; and in the middle and perhaps right to the end. You certainly have no guarantee of returning to your former self; the essential you changes. As in Vicki's case, what "came easily" may, after a serious life event, be compromised. Death, divorce, depression, anxiety, obesity, illness, breakdown, seizures after surgery (with its cocktail of anesthesia meds): these my sibs and I have spent time recovering from. Troubles.
'If with all your heart ye truly seek Me, ye shall ever surely find Me,' Thus saith our God. Oh! that I knew where I might find Him, that I might even come before His presence! Oh! that I knew where I might find Him!... 'If with all your heart ye truly seek Me; Ye shall ever surely find Me,' Thus saith our God. Mendelssohn's Oratorio Elijah-----
I sat alone upon some jutting eminence, At the first gleam of dawn-light, when the Vale, Yet slumbering, lay in utter solitude. Oft in these moments such a holy calm Would overspread my soul, that bodily eyes Were utterly forgotten, and what I saw Appeared like something in myself, a dream, A prospect in the mind. William Wordsworth, The Prelude 'Tis - but I cannot name it -'tis the sense Of majesty, and beauty, and repose, A blended holiness of earth and sky, Something that makes this individual spot A whole, without dependence or defect, Made for itself, and happy in itself, Perfect contentment, unity entire. William Wordsworth, The Recluse, Book First - Home at Grasmere
Dorothy Wordsworth was one of those rare beings, at once highly gifted and self-abnegating, who are content to minister to another's genius and be lost in another's light. She possessed phenomenally what her brother lacked: sensitiveness to the minuter loveliness of Nature, the details of sun and cloud, of light and shade, of tree colouring and wild flower grouping, of snowflake and raindrop, butterfly and bird, of nodding daffodil and fading celandine. These things were not noted by her brother until she couched his eye to see them: once seen, they yielded up to him their treasures of immortal meaning; but many of his most delicate verses would never have been written but for her intellectual second sight, discerning and presenting to him the materials for poetic evolution:—Volume 12, no. 9, September 1901, pgs. 665-683
She gave me eyes, she gave me ears,
And humble cares, and delicate fears,
A heart, the fountain of sweet tears,
And love, and thought, and joy.
And she did more than this. Intervening at the critical moment of his life, she saved him from despondency, cleared his heart, and head,
Maintained for me a saving intercourse
With my true self:
She whispered still that brightness would return,
She, in the midst of all, preserved me still
A Poet, made me seek, beneath that name,
And that alone, my office upon earth.