Gratitude Friday 5 16 25 It's a Beautiful Reciprocal Arrangement

The title of this weekly gratitude post is from one of my favorite quotes of all time written by JD Salinger, below. While it may not seem facially to be very positive, it does resonate as such with me. What such writing tells me is that over the long course of human history, people have endured very difficult things, and even in those dark days were able to find some beauty in the bleakest of times. I suspect that writing with such a voice was itself an expression of resilience. I find often this is also a significant reason for why I write. Writing has become part of how I get through things.

“Among other things, you'll find that you're not the first person who was ever confused and frightened and even sickened by human behavior. You're by no means alone on that score, you'll be excited and stimulated to know. Many, many men have been just as troubled morally and spiritually as you are right now. Happily, some of them kept records of their troubles. You'll learn from them—if you want to. Just as someday, if you have something to offer, someone will learn something from you. It's a beautiful reciprocal arrangement. And it isn't education. It's history. It's poetry.” ― J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye

There are other writings across history. A particular dark passage is in the poem, the Masque of Anarchy (or The Mask of Anarchy) which was a British political poem written in 1819 by Percy Bysshe Shelley following the Peterloo Massacre in that year. In his call for freedom, it is perhaps the first modern statement of the principle of nonviolent resistance.

“Stand ye calm and resolute,

Like a forest close and mute,

With folded arms and looks which are

Weapons of unvanquished war.

And if then the tyrants dare,

Let them ride among you there;

Slash, and stab, and maim and hew;

What they like, that let them do.

With folded arms and steady eyes,

And little fear, and less surprise,

Look upon them as they slay,

Till their rage has died away:

Then they will return with shame,

To the place from which they came,

And the blood thus shed will speak

In hot blushes on their cheek”

I do not know what the passage means to you the reader, but to me it highlights how hatred, violence and bloodshed are not sustainable over the long term and those that embark in the direction of hatred, violence and bloodshed inevitably face an accounting for their actions as “they then return with shame in hot blushes on their cheek. Or as John Steinbeck penned in East of Eden:

"I believe that there is one story in the world, and only one. . . . Humans are caught—in their lives, in their thoughts, in their hungers and ambitions, in their avarice and cruelty, and in their kindness and generosity too—in a net of good and evil. . . . There is no other story. A man, after he has brushed off the dust and chips of his life, will have left only the hard, clean questions: Was it good or was it evil? Have I done well—or ill”

Even more contemporarily, when we consider human history and our desire to heal from and learn from the ways of humanity, as noted by performance artist Laurie Anderson:

“She said, What is history?

And he said, History is an angel

Being blown

Backwards

Into the future

He said: History is a pile of debris

And the angel wants to go back and fix things

To repair the things that have been broken

But there is a storm blowing from Paradise

And the storm keeps blowing the angel

Backwards

Into the future

And this storm, this storm

Is called

Progress” – Laurie Anderson

 It is probably evident to readers that my sense of this moment in our history is that we are not in our finest hour. A view perhaps shared more broadly by others. One of the things one can see through the efforts of great writers is that there is even beauty in the darkness. And as they say in recovery, this too shall end.  I am grateful for all those who have come before us who show us that we can get through times which we may prefer not to live through and that even in those moments are things to be appreciated.

What are you grateful for today?