June 7
Hold fast, O heart: even the longest night of sorrow / the morning outwaits. / Whoever knows that every darkness has an end / can bear the darkness, too.
The Divan (freely rendered)
Listening mode
Hold fast, O heart: even the longest night of sorrow / the morning outwaits. / Whoever knows that every darkness has an end / can bear the darkness, too.
When you think back on a hard time that lies behind you, what you mostly remember is how it went: how it began, what helped after that, when it got easier. It has taken on a shape, with a beginning and an end. How long it felt while you were in it can hardly be retrieved.
That is why earlier experiences are a strange comfort. They show you that you have come through before. At the same time they make your present situation seem unusually long, because it alone has no shape yet. Next to the finished stories it looks like the one that doesn't fit.
Perhaps knowing that something will end is hardest to use precisely when you would need it. You do know it, but it speaks in the voice of later. Sometimes something smaller helps more in the moment: that this evening will pass, that on Thursday there's an appointment at which you don't have to solve anything.
Some day you will tell the story of this time, too, in abridged form. Whether you'll be glad of that, you don't know yet.
