September 18, 2016
THERE ARE MEN TOO GENTLE TO LIVE AMONG WOLVES
JAMES KAVANAUGH(1928-2009)
This was a book of poetry I read back in the seventies, but one that keeps reverberating in my mind, tugging on my thoughts.
There is so much going on in the world that is unpleasant, even downright evil. There are some doors that open to places I cannot enter. Heck I had a difficult time even driving on the interstates last month. The anxiety and sadness and the feeling of forlornness nearly suffocated me.
I have tried to talk to people about this and the feedback has run the gambit from
“desensitize” to “maybe medication adjustment?”
Maybe I could just accept that I have reached a point in my life where I get to adjust my exposure. I know I don’t want to lose my ability to feel the pain of others, but I do not want it to destroy me. Empathy doesn’t seem to be in vogue much these days.
Don’t get me wrong. I believe in taking myself to the limit sometimes. I just have to recognize that point and fade back into the natural world to be consoled and comforted so that I might once again have hope and faith in the goodness of the world. I also need to surround myself with gentle people, for I have found them to be people of strength and courage.
In the prolog of his book of poetry Kavanaugh wrote in 1970….
“I am one of the searchers. There are, I believe, millions of us. We are not unhappy, but neither are we really content. We continue to explore life, hoping to uncover its ultimate secret. We continue to explore ourselves, hoping to understand. We like to walk along the beach, we are drawn by the ocean, taken by its power, its unceasing motion, its mystery and unspeakable beauty. We like forests and mountains, deserts and hidden rivers, and the lonely cities as well. Our sadness is as much a part of our lives as is our laughter. To share our sadness with one we love is perhaps as great a joy as we can know – unless it be to share our laughter.
We searchers are ambitious only for life itself, for everything beautiful it can provide. Most of all we love and want to be loved. We want to live in a relationship that will not impede our wandering, nor prevent our search, nor lock us in prison walls; that will take us for what little we have to give. We do not want to prove ourselves to another or compete for love.
For wanderers, dreamers, and lovers, for lonely men and women who dare to ask of life everything good and beautiful. It is for those who are too gentle to live among wolves.”
And then years later, in 1984 he wrote this in a preface to the paperback….
“I will probably be a searcher until I die and hopefully death itself will only be another adventure. To live any other way seems impossible. If anything has changed over the years, and it has, I only feel more confident now about what I wrote then. I am far more aware of the power that guides each of us along the way, and provides us with the insights and people we need for our journey. There are, indeed, men and women too gentle to live among wolves and only when joined with them will life offer the searcher, step by step, all that is good and beautiful. Life becomes not a confused struggle or pointless pain, but an evolving mosaic masterpiece of the person we were destined to become.”
I hope to continue to walk gently upon the earth and to spread Love and Kindness and Joy wherever and whenever possible. To do so I must first open my heart to receive the goodness of others.
FloraZahn 