To
Call Myself Beloved
“And did
you get what
you wanted
from this life, even so?
I did.
And what
did you want?
To call
myself beloved. To feel myself
beloved on
the earth.”
Raymond
Carver (“A New Path to the Waterfall”)
Imagine, at the end
of our days, that we were as clear about what truly matters as the
writer of this short poem—“to call myself beloved. To feel myself
beloved on the earth.” Raymond Carver lived a hard, short life—born
at the end of the depression, poor, he learned young how to numb-out
with alcohol, and died from it at the ripe old age of 50. But, out of
all that misery came these lucid thoughts:
“There
isn't enough of anything
as long as
we live. But at intervals
a
sweetness appears and, given a chance,
prevails.”
(Ultramarine:Poems)
Whether you are young or
old, nearer to the beginning of your life or to the end, periodically
ask yourself this question: Am I getting what I want from life? If
the answer is “no,” then ask: What is preventing me from getting
what I want? If your first impulse is to blame someone else, start
over. Whose life is it anyway?
Sometimes what we think
we want is problematic. When I was young, all I wanted was...well,
everything—in great abundance. When I got everything I thought I
wanted, it wasn't enough. The problem, then, is not lack of abundance
but wanting for all the wrong things. This isn't an indictment
because we all do it—it's human nature to want it all and to think
that if we get it all, we'll be happy and fulfilled. It just,
unfortunately, isn't so. There will never be enough.
However, what there is,
what is always there in endless supply, is love and acceptance if we
allow ourselves that guilty pleasure. Notice the line in Carver's
poem is, “To call myself beloved.” When we are able
to call ourselves beloved, and to feel ourselves beloved on the
earth, we will have it all, and there will be no wanting for
more. That's the sweetness that appears at intervals and, if we allow it,
prevails.
In the Spirit,
Jane
No comments:
Post a Comment