Friday I went to the library and picked up several books, one of which was The Book of Delights by Ross Gay. Last night just before turning out the light I read this beautiful piece, a part of the essay, Joy Is Such A Human Madness:
"What if we joined our wildernesses together?
And what if the wilderness - perhaps the densest wild in there - thickets, bogs, swamps, uncrossable ravines, and rivers (have I made the metaphor clear?) - is our sorrow? Or, to use Smith's term, the "intolerable." It astonishes me sometimes - no, often - how every person I get to know - everyone, regardless of everything, by which I mean everything - lives with some profound personal sorrow. Brother addicted. Dad died in surgery. Rejected by their family. Cancer came back. Evicted. Fetus not okay. Everyone, regardless, always, of everything. Not to mention the existential sorrow we all might be afflicted with, which is that we, and what we love, will soon be annihilated. Which sounds more dramatic than it might. Let me just say dead. Is this, sorrow, of which our impending being no more might be the foundation, the great wilderness?
Is sorrow the true wild? And if it is - and if we join them - your wild to mine - what's that? For joining, too, is a kind of annihilation. What if we joined our sorrows, I'm saying. I'm saying: What if that is joy?"
(p. 49-50)
Read the OnBeing interview with Ross Gay here.