"It is a joy to be hidden, and disaster not to be found.”
D.W. Winnicott
We try to define and understand our pain. We search for the reasons and we make comparisons, hoping to fix ourselves, hoping to arrive at a point beyond its reaches. A point of maturity. Or enlightenment. Because surely, if we would be truly mature, capable individuals, then we would know who we are; we would know how and what to choose, and in what to trust. Instead we stand, tiny atoms at the edge of a vast and listening universe, and we seek to know. Because surely we can.
And in seeking to know we yearn to understand and to be understood. To see and to be seen. We ask of others what we have yet to find in ourselves. In reaching out we become equal parts judge and supplicant. But perhaps the truth is that we cannot ever know, ever compare, ever arrive. No matter who we are, or from where we have come to reach this point, we are all, now and always, tiny points of a unique madness within an astonishingly and incomprehensibly beautiful creative work.
We judge ourselves for what we cannot give, cannot offer; we fall short of our lowest expectations. And in so doing we fail to see the miracle of what we yet share, every day. There is so very much we cannot do and that, in our deepest, most secret selves, may not want to do, that we perhaps cram our moments with duty in the name of compassion. But just occasionally, or even more frequently than we can know or imagine, across the vast universes that separate us all, one from another, there is a moment of genuine connection. And that connection comes, not from duty but from that unnameable place within that is as elusive and as inexplicable as our pain. True connection is not a choice or an act. And yet it speaks through all our actions, all our choices.
We are uniquely flawed and uniquely astonishing.
D.W. Winnicott
We try to define and understand our pain. We search for the reasons and we make comparisons, hoping to fix ourselves, hoping to arrive at a point beyond its reaches. A point of maturity. Or enlightenment. Because surely, if we would be truly mature, capable individuals, then we would know who we are; we would know how and what to choose, and in what to trust. Instead we stand, tiny atoms at the edge of a vast and listening universe, and we seek to know. Because surely we can.
And in seeking to know we yearn to understand and to be understood. To see and to be seen. We ask of others what we have yet to find in ourselves. In reaching out we become equal parts judge and supplicant. But perhaps the truth is that we cannot ever know, ever compare, ever arrive. No matter who we are, or from where we have come to reach this point, we are all, now and always, tiny points of a unique madness within an astonishingly and incomprehensibly beautiful creative work.
We judge ourselves for what we cannot give, cannot offer; we fall short of our lowest expectations. And in so doing we fail to see the miracle of what we yet share, every day. There is so very much we cannot do and that, in our deepest, most secret selves, may not want to do, that we perhaps cram our moments with duty in the name of compassion. But just occasionally, or even more frequently than we can know or imagine, across the vast universes that separate us all, one from another, there is a moment of genuine connection. And that connection comes, not from duty but from that unnameable place within that is as elusive and as inexplicable as our pain. True connection is not a choice or an act. And yet it speaks through all our actions, all our choices.
We are uniquely flawed and uniquely astonishing.