How infinitely rich
Photo by Brocken Inaglory, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
“I think these difficult times have helped me to understand better than before how infinitely rich and beautiful life is in every way, and that so many things that one goes around worrying about are of no importance whatsoever.” — Isak Dinesen
Perhaps the understanding Dinesen describes is one of the greatest gifts to come out of suffering. Such a gift is a mixed blessing, and not simply because it grows out of pain. Our deepened awareness can make us impatient with others who are complacent, caught up in things we see as inconsequential– and it can make us doubly hard on ourselves when we find that we are likewise wasting precious moments, too caught up in our own self-pity to see the loveliness.
Just as I have to shake myself awake some mornings when I am reluctant to open my eyes to a new day, I often have to rouse my heart and spirit out of its temporary blindness and ingratitude. Life is short. The clock is ticking. What beauty lies just outside your door, awaiting discovery?
This post was first published seven years ago today. The original post, comments and photo are linked, along with two other related posts, below. These links to related posts, and their thumbnail photos, do not appear in the blog feed; they are only visible when viewing the individual posts by clicking on each one. I have no idea why, nor do I know how they choose the related posts. That’s just the way WordPress does things.
- Posted in: Uncategorized
- Tagged: appreciation, beauty, consolation, gratitude, mindfulness, pain, solace, sorrow, suffering, understanding
Defeat Despair 
Good morning, Julia!
That really is a lovely photo. There are so many appealing elements in it.
Thursday is another sunrise moonset.
As the days are getting longer, this is the best time of year to get up to see those!
Believe it or not, I don’t even know what a “sunrise moonset” is– and I don’t have time to look it up right now, but I’ll try to remember to do that later…
Hi Julia, in case you have still been too busy, a sunrise moonset is just that – around the full moon, we have a couple of days of sunset-moonrise, where the moon rises around sunset, then the full moon comes, followed by a couple of days of sunrise-moonset. Both can offer nice photo opportunities, with the moon low in a color-changing sky.
Isn’t the moon fascinating? I remember how delighted I would be when I caught an unexpected view of the moon while it was still broad daylight. I never understood how it happened, but that didn’t matter.
Recently a friend who had not long ago lost her husband after a long illness asked me if I was lonely and how I coped after Neil died. I don’t think I’m ever lonely. That is not to say I don’t miss Neil and often think of what might have been. However, I’m grateful for the time we had together and thankful for being here now. I am fortunate to have many close friends many having also lost their partners. My grandchildren are a source of delight even though I only see them now and then. I know your situation is quite different Julia and my thoughts and prayers go out to you.
Have you read Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus? It’s the first book on our list to read for Book Club. I’m really enjoying it. Dorothy x
Hi Dorothy, oddly enough, one of my Oxford classmates mentioned reading that book, so I put a hold on it at the local public library. Apparently it’s quite popular because the waitlist is long! Thank you for recognizing how isolating my own particular circumstances are. I’m basically a gregarious person, so I often do wish I had a good friend who lived nearby. But since Jeff was such an introvert– almost a hermit– I grew accustomed to our living in a little “cocoon,” and I learned to like the calm and sanity of being at home, and the semi-solitude of living with a taciturn person. Also, when one spends as many years as I have with very demanding levels of caregiving, solitude is easily recognized as the gift (even the luxury) that it is. As you say, it’s hard not to think of what might have been, but I try not to do that. I try to focus on all the blessings that remain, and there are many! Thanks for being among them!
Julia,
Too often we find no value in suffering. No one likes it, but all must at one time or other endure it. When in the throes of suffering is an opportunity for us to focus within and come face to face with certain indiscretions which need addressing and amends. When well, we push them aside until a more convenient time. Only to one day find it is then too late. Suffering is not solely a matter of the body, but soul, as well.
Venerable Archbishop Sheen said: We are either one of two kinds of people. One who greets the morning with “Good God, morning!” Or “good morning God”!
Don’t waste the day. For no whatever your vocation, whether surgeon or gardener, what you do and how you do it matters to someone. Let your suffering be your guide not a deterrent.
-Alan
Alan, these are wise words. And they contrast sharply with a very nasty (anonymous) comment I got recently, calling me “a monster” and saying that only a sociopath says suffering is beautiful. Of course I deleted it without response, and of course, I never said suffering was beautiful. Rather, I was recognizing what you too know, that there are gifts that come from endurance and trials. Or as my friend Ashleigh Brilliant has said, “What you want is sometimes hidden inside what you don’t want.” Thank you for balancing the nasty comment with these wise observations. I hope you are staying warm and well in these cold months!
Julia,
I often answer the nasty responses.
The best example of intense suffering is on the cross. Only God could endure it to the end. He has on that cross none of the desires of anyone of us. Wealth, honor, power and pleasure. Has He wealth? No, not even his clothes were left. Has He honor? No, He was spit at and ridiculed. Has He power? No, He is pinned to that cross. Has He pleasure? No, He was beaten, abused and hangs in crucifixion.
He has none of those things that we treasure. Yet what we see is a happy man? For He is not burdened with any of these things that obsess and burden so many through frustration in their evasive pursuit or by their eventual addiction.
-Alan
Alan, I thought the same thing to myself when I read the nasty comment. One of my favorite Bible verses is Isaiah 55:8-9: “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,” declares the Lord. “As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.” All around us we see evidence that the so-called “wisdom” of the world leads nowhere.