Light and Shade

The quality of our lives seem to contain alternating waves of good and bad, hard and soft, light and shade. If we are lucky enough to appreciate that this is the nature of existence, we can bear much better with the shady parts of our lives. We can have faith that whatever it is we are having to bear with, no matter how painful it may seem at the time, the good times will roll around again. And the good times can be so good, so full of richness, pleasure, joy, lightness and brightness, that they are worth any price we may ultimately have to pay for  the good fortune we have the luck to be earning.

The dilemma we have to cope with is that sometimes we do not realize that what we are passing through are the bright times, the good times, the best times, that we will ever experience in our lives. That only comes with survival and retrospection.

I remember that I left home at the age of eighteen to spend a year of work and study in Israel. I did not think to ask for the permission of my parents, I just made my plans and informed them of those plans. I never thought to do otherwise, and I was never questioned. I saved up the money I needed from the odd jobs I performed as I wended my way through my high school years. I applied for the assignment, paid the price, counted my pennies, and off I went, travelling across the world.

I was a part of a group, but I felt very much alone. I remember that, being  alone, on that ship sailing across the ocean, my mind full, brimming full, of speculations about the nature of the world. I wrote incessantly about that on every scrap of paper I could find.

 I have some of those scraps in a file I have kept to this day. So much of it, seems to me today, to be a load of nonsense. The gist of it was I was a solitary sailor afloat on the sea of life and that life was incredibly sweet. I was full of wants. I wanted to find a true companion. I wanted a country of my own. I wanted to be a hero. I wanted to save the world. I was going to do it all myself if I had to. At the time I could read it all in the palm of my hand, and it was all going to happen. I was totally free from obligations, except for those that I chose to lay upon myself. On myself I laid the responsibility for creating the perfect world. All of us are heroes in our own eyes, and we have to try as hard as we can to live up to that image of ourselves.

How was that not the most superlative moment of my life to that date. And at that time, and too often in the future, I had not the merest clue as to the nature of the importance of those moments in my existence. I was unconsciously writing an agenda for my life.

 I am no different from others, and all of you have had those moments in your lives, those moments whose importance  is only appreciated by you with the passage of time and the gleanings of experience, given the survival you have earned.

I remember holding a child of mine in my arms, and feeling like I would burst with joy. I remember when I was leaving my first job, hearing that my superiors were frantic about who they could find fill the hole I was leaving by my departure. I remember the moment when I realized that I had succeeded in resolving the dilemma that would yield years of success at the impossible task that I had taken on, knowing that no one else in the world knew what I knew to be true. I remember the instant when I had recaptured the love of my heart after fifty long years of disappointment when I had not found the companionship I longed for. I remember the moments when I began to understand what elements of my behavior prevented my Bride from feeling the depth of my love for her. All these momentous events, events that cast other parts of my life in the shade where they belonged, I could  only truly appreciate in retrospect. The   thrill they yield when I recall them I relive over and over again. So it must be for so many of you out there, looking in through this window into my life, when you recall your own experiences.

Surely there are lessons to be learned by sentient beings from these experiences. Don’t they tell us  when we find ourselves in periods when there is shade all around us, that the moments we hope for,  and will cherish all the days of our lives, will surely arrive for us if we carry on? Just as day follows night, our turn at good fortune will arrive as long as we put in the necessary effort to survive what may seem to us to be the worst of times. Isn’t that the secret, that we try, and try again, to confront the challenges we face, and we never, never, give up?

What’s happening at your house?