September 5
Such is time: it takes from us youth, joy and all we have, and pays us with nothing but dust and the grave. Yet from the dark grave and dust, I believe, the Lord will raise me up again.
Epitaph (freely rendered)
Listening mode
Such is time: it takes from us youth, joy and all we have, and pays us with nothing but dust and the grave. Yet from the dark grave and dust, I believe, the Lord will raise me up again.
When something has been taken from you, the wish soon arises to have got at least something in return: an insight, a certain maturity, a story you can tell later. You ask yourself what you learned from it, as though the loss had to settle its account after the fact.
Sometimes that even works. Often, though, the account stays lopsided. A friendship that has come apart is not outweighed by an understanding of friendship. And whoever is too quick to work out the balance for you usually means well, and yet takes something from you: permission to see the loss simply as a loss.
Hope is something other than that kind of balancing. It can stand beside the statement that nothing was paid back without retracting it. Perhaps it is most credible where it does not make the damage smaller in order to seem more convincing itself. Then you do not have to choose between grief and expectation.
If someone asks you what it was all good for, you may hesitate.
