Perservering

My friend Don was worried about me recently. I was moaning about how much my life sucked of late and I told him that, were it not for Ransom, I might be suicidal. This set off alarms for him and he expressed serious concern. I felt bad that he reacted that way, because, while I stand by what I said, I am NOT in fact suicidal. As my last post indicated, I am immensely happy to be celebrating 25 years with a wonderful man. I am blessed and I know that. Plenty of people have things far worse than I.

That said, I am, mostly, a pessimist and, having been slammed a lot in the past six months, I've affirmed my belief that life is difficult, joy fleeting and the general state of mankind depressing. Alex Ross, writing on Bach in the current issue of the New Yorker says

“The musicologist Gerd Rienäcker has written that Bach possessed a “consciousness of catastrophe”—a feeling for the suddenness and arbitrariness with which suffering descends on unsuspecting souls. The texts of Bach’s church cantatas . . . indicate that the life of man is like a rising and vanishing mist; that we live with one foot in the grave; and that those who sit among us like gods will be forgotten. The world is said to be like a hospital in which countless people, even infants in cradles, lie down in sickness.

I look forward to pulling out some Bach cantatas and listening again, keeping the above in mind. I certainly agree with Johann Sebastian but had never before thought about his life philosophy and his music, and how they relate to each other. In the opening of the New Yorker piece Ross points out that Bach's parents both died when he was but nine years old and that, as an adult, he watched ten of his children die young. Ten! The man certainly knew misery and pain.

I could list the emotional and physical injuries I've been dealt since September, but there's no point. You have your own list, perhaps longer than mine. Some people's lists will be shorter. Some people will argue that life is beautiful – I try not to think of them as Pollyannas, but there is that temptation. There's an old saw something like “if you're not an optimist at twenty you have no heart; if you're still an optimist at forty you have no brain.” Here, here!

Don thought that my comment was a cry for help. I understand that, and from many people, it would be. From me, it is simply a statement of what I think is obvious. Life is powerfully cruel. But love can be even more powerful. Ransom's love allows me to persevere and, on a good day, even flourish.