…The reviewer for the book, The Mind’s Eye by Oliver Sacks, states in her New York Times review that “Sacks is most engaged by the process of compensation, how people make up for what they have lost…I found myself longing for the return of the ideal doctor of earlier chapters, and then I saw. He was right there, teaching us one more lesson: that compensation is meager consolation, that loss is painful, no matter what replaces it…A move to a new job or a new neighborhood may make us, for a time, full of complaint and self-pity…’The problems never went away,’ the novelist reports, ‘but I became cleverer at solving them’.”
We are coming up to the holidays. We’re “supposed” to enjoy them – whether or not we’re in the mood, whether or not our hearts are fully engaged.
Imagine the magazine headlines: 5 Terrifying Conversational Bloopers to Avoid with Relatives! Don’t Ruin Everyone’s Holiday: 4 Full-Proof Jokes to Share During Dinner! Don’t Let Your Family Corner You After the Feast: 10 Things to Do Instead of Screaming at Your Loved Ones!
Can we “make up” for what we have lost? Or do we just keep on “keeping on”
– with as much playfulness, grace and compassion as we find ourselves capable of mustering, in spite of our ill-humor, irritability and human mistakes?
You can guess where my sympathy lies. Make mistakes. Be authentic. Be kind. But acknowledge that life is hard. Life is often painful. What do I value most? Demonstrating how much I love to those I love most. That’s what life teaches me every day. With every fall leaf that turns colors and soon blows.