The last line of Norman Cousins' speech in 1994 was, "We are so much stronger than we think we are." Its echo fills my heart. It mattered because the speaker overcame a terminal diagnosis. His successful survival strategy? Laughter.
Viktor Frankl, founder of "meaning therapy," would credit a will to live.
Thriving requires Hope. Hope needs Meaning. Love brings Healing.
Without Hope, Love is Robin's egg fragile.
We learn Love's strength under duress. Some 911 survivors reasoned that God had betrayed them. There is no such God.
When I sail with Reason he explains the sea but not why she is beautiful. God's Love is perfectly ineffable. Her ship cannot be sunk nor her light extinguished.
If God is perfect, why should we, aboard our flaw-filled craft, even try? Humanity needs humility & a range of often tiresome practices to nurture the Love within.
As a a disciple of the Romance god I am vulnerable to his vagaries. Romance is Love's god of idealization. He sets expectations high & convinces us they are achievable.
He delivers examples: "Here is the job you always wanted," he says.
We capture it. Inevitably, Reality riddles our "perfect" job with holes.
If our work is just a job Disappointment shoves Hope aside. If our work is a calling Hope's energy will heal the holes.
The "called" show impossible persistence: A paralyzed FDR pursing the Presidency. Mother Teresa serving the poorest of the poor. Martin Luther King enduring imprisonment to win freedom.
And you who live your Calling can deliver loving care to a patient that throws bedpans & insults when you enter the room. Compassion informs your hurt heart & enables you to return the next day.
Love's steady light, not Romance's shifting illumination, supports our ship in storms &, importantly, when becalmed.
Romantics, whether in career or art or in love, seek Adventure's peculiar thrills & attendant risks. The most life-threatening storms strike when some force severs a romantic's connection to his calling or to his love.
That is why lovers that rely solely on Romance are shocked when his sustaining winds fail & their ship wanders aimlessly. They cannot imagine why those winds that filled their sails faded & assume they will never return.
Abandoned & smothered in gray, the rainbow romantic screams for those swirls of color. If not found they seek to off-load their pain. Instead of drawing strength from Love they curse their boat & search for a new one.
But no voyage can succeed without Love's guidance. That is why Shakespeare's genius is as practical as it is romantic: "...Love is not love/ Which alters when it alteration finds."
Those who dwell deeply Love's heart of hearts discovers that her greatest gift is not found in rainbows but in the white light that mysteriously holds all colors. Inside that secret, sacred embrace they learn they are stronger than they think they are.
Everything.
-Erie Chapman
Photograph - "Rainbow Sailing" by Erie
Here is Rilke (abridged):
A god has the power. But can a man
wring the same from a slender lyre?
...no temple of Apollo
stands where two hearts cross.
Song, as you teach it, is not desire,
...Song is existence. Easy for a god.
But what of us? When will he
the earth and the stars towards us?
It's not, young man, when you're in love
...--learn
To forget what you once sang. That is fleeting.
True singing is a different kind of breath.
A breath that aims nowhere. A wind.
[Everything]
