Choose Hope

It’s on my refrigerator door–a small, rectangular magnet wedged between a “Choose Hope” magnet and a photograph of my son. The image on the magnet startles. Think Edvard Munch crossed with Vincent Van Gogh. An image depicting a bit of both artists: the sheer starkness of Munch’s scream on a yellow-splashed figure with arms uplifted wide in a field of blue, green, and yellow brushstrokes. As if reaching for sky. Or stars. Or sun. As if embracing the whole of the sky, stars, sun, and horizon of the earth.

But a figure in a background whose purpose is unclear, elusive even. An unsteadiness tangible, palpable. Is this figure screaming, arms outstretched and field ablaze with such sharp colors because the artist is depicting pain? Loss? Grief? Is the figure letting go of pain? Or is the figure reaching for what can never be again–a loss so permanent as to thrust all of one’s self into the permanence of pain?

Perhaps the figure is reeling from a loss so catastrophic that all one can do is scream to sky, to stars, to sun–to wherever forever is, to where forever is out of reach forever again.

Beth Brown, My Forever Son, From Sorrow to Joy: How Pain Colors Loss

Or is the figure reaching for what can never be again–a loss so permanent as to thrust all of one’s self into the permanence of pain?

Beth Brown, My Forever Son

Lightness of Being

On Joy and Sorrow

Kahlil Gibran – 1883-1931

On Joy and Sorrow

Then a woman said, Speak to us of Joy and Sorrow.
     And he answered:
     Your joy is your sorrow unmasked.
     And the selfsame well from which your laughter rises was oftentimes filled with your tears.
     And how else can it be?
     The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain.
     Is not the cup that holds your wine the very cup that was burned in the potter’s oven?
     And is not the lute that soothes your spirit, the very wood that was hollowed with knives?
     When you are joyous, look deep into your heart and you shall find it is only that which has given you sorrow that is giving you joy.
     When you are sorrowful look again in your heart, and you shall see that in truth you are weeping for that which has been your delight.
    
     Some of you say, “Joy is greater than sorrow,” and others say, “Nay, sorrow is the greater.”
     But I say unto you, they are inseparable.
     Together they come, and when one sits alone with you at your board, remember that the other is asleep upon your bed.

     Verily you are suspended like scales between your sorrow and your joy.
     Only when you are empty are you at standstill and balanced.
     When the treasure-keeper lifts you to weigh his gold and his silver, needs must your joy or your sorrow rise or fall.

This poem is in the public domain. Published in Poem-a-Day on February 10, 2019, by the Academy of American Poets.