September 9
Out of the deepest sorrow grows in me the strength to bear it; the soul stretches upward until it stands higher than the grief that meant to bend it.
Sonnets from the Portuguese (freely rendered)
Listening mode
Out of the deepest sorrow grows in me the strength to bear it; the soul stretches upward until it stands higher than the grief that meant to bend it.
Sometimes you notice a calm in yourself that you didn't have before. Bad news throws you less, an argument seems smaller than it wants to feel. Perhaps you know quite precisely when that began.
There is something uncomfortable in this. Had someone offered you this calm in exchange for that time, you would have refused at once. Now you have it anyway. And when you value it, it feels almost as if you were granting the loss, after the fact, a meaning you don't want to give it.
But an ability does not justify what brought it about. That you can bear more today doesn't make what happened then any more necessary than it was. It simply belongs to you now, whether you would have ordered it that way or not.
When someone asks how you manage to stay so composed, you hesitate before answering. The honest answer would sound like a price you never wanted to pay. So you say something about experience, and that is true, after all.
