Polarities and a gotcha moment!

Polarities – diametric opposites are part of our life, indeed part of our individuality. We need the knowledge and understanding that they give us – awake and asleep; light and dark; short and tall; left and right, up and down; love and hate; remembering and forgetting; then a big one – male and female; but the biggest of all polarities is life and death.

These polarities shape us because we cannot know the one without at least some knowledge of the other.

Because we (at least I don’t) know what life actually is – is it just the reaction of chemicals, or is it something that only quantum physics will reveal? – we need to be careful about how we treat or react to events in life.

We are unable to reach a position so removed from daily events to witness the interplay of the various threads (the warp and woof) that link all humans and in fact all life in one vast and unimaginably complex pattern. If we pull or cut one “thread” what effect will this have on our life, on the future or on the life of others? We can never know – all we can ever know is that there will most definitely be an effect. We don’t know what it is but it will certainly affect us in ways we cannot foresee. And we might not like the consequences!

The ancients called this Fate. Many legends warn us not to “play” with Fate. Playing with Fate was/is a human vanity and begets Hubris (the ancient Greeks used this term to describe a person’s attempt to equate themselves with the “Gods” who control events – not a good idea!). Now Hubris, as I have commented on before, seems to invite Nemesis (another ancient Greek term and name of the “Goddess” who is implacable in the pursuit of her cause, to track the effects of every action back to its doer). 

I came across a simple little (if bitter sweet) tale of the complexities of Life and our narrow minded, sometimes selfish, views on what we want and our imagined “control” of Fate and the events that influence our lives.

The tale goes something like this:

A young man is smitten with love for a girl. But it is an unrequited love – she does not reciprocate. However he cannot get her out of his mind.

Someone tells him that there is a “forgetting tree” – go to sleep in its shade and you will forget. The boy somehow finds this tree and goes to sleep in its shade. But when he wakes up he still remembers all about this girl.

He had forgotten how to forget!

Gotcha!!

Don’t try and outsmart Fate – or Life.

Dates – for rememberance.

(Amended 20^thSeptember 2019)

By dates I do not refer to the palm fruit variety or those arrangements to meet someone. No. I refer to those dates in time – referring to events in life that are important to us individually and to the world. The Portuguese sailor, Bartolomeu Diaz – who rounded the Cape of Good Hope in 1488, the “First Fleet” that arrived in Botany Bay (Sydney, Australia) in 1788 are but two that immediately spring to my mind.

Dates are significant for a variety of reasons and each are important in their own way. Birthdays, anniversaries, and important historical occurrence – any date that marks an event on the journey of one’s life. They are reminders of wayfarers we have met, of things we have done. 

For me certain dates have a special meaning. Being a “war baby” – (Second World War) I have the dates of the beginning and end of that tumultuous time firmly set (generally accepted as 1 September 1939 -2 September 1945). And also the First World War (the War to end all wars!) because both my grandfathers were combatants in that one (28 July 1914 – 11 November 1918). 

When a child I was taught to always remember “Armistice Day”, or “Poppy Day” as it is sometimes called – 11^thNovember. 

Nearer home, as it were, are the dates of my retirement – 19^thOctober 2012. Now another date – a date recording a death, 21^stJanuary 2016 as is 1^stJune. Every 21^stis for me both a time of celebration (in October, it is my birthday) and every 1^stJune, a time of reflection, of remembrance and of great sadness. The 21^stJanuary is the date of the death of my best friend – my wife, Magucha, and 1^stJune is the date my first wife Frances, died (in 1977).

As anyone who reads these rambling posts well knows that poetry has a special meaning for me. There is a poet my late bother, Bruce, enjoyed – a Canadian by the name of Robert Service, and a poem he wrote:

 “Unforgotten” 

I know the garden where the lilies gleam,

  And one who lingers in the sunshine there;

  She is than white-stoled lily far more fair,

And, oh, her eyes are heaven-lit with dream!

I know the garret, cold and dark and drear,

  And one who toils and toils with tireless pen,

  Until his brave, sad eyes grow weary – then

He seeks the stars pale, silent as a seer.

And ah, it’s strange; for, desolate and dim,

  Between these two there rolls an ocean wide;

  Yet he is in the garden by her side

And she is in the garret there with him. 

Uncompromised Love.

Love has always been the driving force of life. And by “love” I do not just mean passion though that obviously plays a part. I am talking about the love between friends; between husband and wife (or the equivalent partners) that develops after many years of life together; between parents and their children and love for Humanity. That kind of love – which IS uncompromised.

The power of love is recognized in poetry, in song, in novels and literature, in art and in opera - it is the power that drives us all. This cannot be just “chemicals in the brain” or hormonal juices, there is much more to it than that!

Now I loved my wife in a manner that I find difficult to portray in a meaningful way to others. Tenderness – yes; closeness – yes; deep understanding – yes; ability to communicate without necessarily speaking – yes; trust – yes; talking about problems – yes; sharing – yes; respect – yes, all this and more that I do not have the words to explain.

While neither of us was in anyway saintly, there was a fulfillment that seemed to make the two of us stronger in our own way. Magucha was an amazingly strong person, not physically strong (she was very small in stature) but emotionally and mentally she was spring steel. Her resilience, which defied all that the world could throw at her, astonished everyone with whom she came in contact.

This strength – which I, for one, found quite inspiring – is epitomized by the following poem by Alfred Noyes, and this is for her:

The Anvil

Stand like a beaten anvil, when thy dream

            Is laid upon thee, golden from the fire.

Flinch not, though heavily through that furnace-gleam

            The black forge-hammers fall on thy desire.

Demoniac giants round thee seem to loom.

‘Tis but the world-smiths heaving to and fro.

Stand like a beaten anvil. Take the doom 

            Their ponderous weapons deal thee, blow on blow.

Needful to truth as dew-fall to the flower

            Is this wild wrath and this implacable scorn.

For every pang, new beauty, and new power,

            Burning blood-red shall on thy heart be born.

Stand like a beaten anvil. Let earth’s wrong

Beat on that iron and ring back in song.