I woke up the other morning, did a bit of yoga, got some
coffee and sat down at the computer. I went to a newspage and saw it there, the
same thing that’s always there: Terrorism. Corruption. Lies. Threats. The
million ways people think to hurt and kill each other. And the thought, the one
that has hovered at the edge of my consciousness for more years than I can
count, came unbidden to my head: “I’m supposed to want to live in this world?
Why would I ever choose that? With all this suffering and death, why would I
ever want anything except not to be
here?”
Despite the many benefits of my privileged, white, Western,
middle class, educated status and my relatively easy life, I have never found
the act of living an easy thing to do. It’s not that my life is too difficult, but that I look around and sometimes all
I see are the sorrows and cares and pains of a world that is hurting. Hurting
all the time. Without respite, without end. We struggle and we strive and we
try to help, and we go on because we have to, but why, I think, why would
anyone want to?
I sat down the coffee cup and got up from my computer – time
to wake up the 10-year-old for school. He giggled and laughed; the dog licked
his nose, causing him to roll around snorting, trying to get out the dog breath
smell; and he gave me a hug. “Hey Mom, come watch this!” “Hey Mom, did I tell
you about this?” Thus our morning went, all laughter and smiles. And I
remembered that in the midst of the struggle and the striving, alongside the
sorrows and cares, there is laughter and love and joy. After I got my son to
school, I went and helped my mom with some things, where I remembered that what
we do matters, that our actions can bring something good into someone else’s
life, even if only in the smallest of ways.
My son and my mother gave me great gifts that day, although
they didn’t realize it. They helped me remember the balance of the world, it’s
beauty and goodness alongside its pain and suffering. In the most ordinary of
ways, they showed me the extraordinary depth and richness in which we live
every day. And I do so very much thank them for it.
