The spirit grows weary with the weight of woe in the world at large and here at home. The litany of distress and wrong-doing and cruelty and ill-will seems never-ending. It is hard to take an optimistic view of anything. Dire warnings and forbidding futures fill the commentaries here and everywhere. If I began to list the on-going horrors and looming threats this column would only end when the editor cried halt. Make your own list and you will see what I mean.
How does one find relief? Looking back over my life it comes home to me how much depends on meeting and knowing people whose make-up includes an invincible optimism, lightness of spirit, goodwill and what one can only call sweetness of nature.
I am not speaking of charisma. There is something overwhelming about a charismatic person, something elemental, commanding and demanding rapt attention. Charisma is a mystifying and awful gift. The persona of a charismatic person fills any place he or she goes. Charisma enlarges the significance of any moment spent where it is engaged. Charisma brings out passion and complete devotion in other people and that can be good or bad.
But, no, I am not speaking of charisma. I am speaking of a lighter and more lovely thing. People who possess the gift of how to live at ease with themselves, with others and the world have kind hearts and consoling natures. They have sweetened my life immensely. They do not impose themselves. They take you as you are and love you. They take sourness and recrimination out of life.
Such people have this in common with the charismatic ones. You know them as soon as you meet them. They lighten the spirits of all around them. They speak well of the world they live in despite its faults. They find good in people whenever they can. In their universes the arc of what is good and just will bend at last in the right direction. They nudge our thoughts to where hope and promise still hold sway.
They do not weigh you down with worries of their own. Of course they have these but they prefer to share their joys. Their nature is forever captured in the lines from Thomas Dekker’s delightful play The Shoemaker’s Holiday: “I had rather than a thousand pound/I had an heart but halfe so light as his.”
They are good with little children who gravitate to them as they would to those who offer dreams and kindness. “See how the little one looks into his eyes and runs into his arms!”
They find the gleam and light of the world. Who is not beset by shadows? But such men and women deeply know that shadows only show because a sun is shining. Deep pain can be shared with them and lessened. Hard troubles told and eased. What seems to have no meaning is given meaning. Difficult to explain but in their company the universe seems less lonely.
They say, why not hear the music of the wild wind? Storm-chasing beside golden fields of corn. They skip bright stones across dark waters – look there, my friend, how the hard stones sing and shine. They embrace you in troubled times. Woebegone is far, far from them. In their presence the ills of the world withdraw a while. Search for them and keep them because they are treasures. The shadows of the world retreat when they are near. I am writing this and remember my old friend Gordon “Gig” Delph. He died decades ago but I recall him still. We all of us pursue shadows – fleeting as mist in moonlight – and they are mostly power and the fruits of power, fame and fortune, the world’s regard, possessions that soon grow dry as dust, the domination of people and self-regarding, tall ambition. Gig pursued his shadows too but his were other shadows. His shadows were the love of family and friends, laughter and making life seem good, the pleasant passing of a holiday with talk and humour and old memories and a steam or two, kindness and a hospitable home, a glorying in children. He put ambition at the very edge of life and filled his days with family and friends and fun – shadows still but shadows of a kinder day.
Kindness indeed. I remember Gig with his old father, the old man a terror in his time, a beater of sons, but now old and lonely except for Gig and Gig brought him everywhere, to our tennis games and to the homes of friends so that he would have company and listen to the talk and the jokes and not be lonely.
I remember long ago when I was a boy my father held a dead bird in the palm of his hand and said the beauty all had gone – to see it like that and describe it alive, alive and flying, was to see ashes and try to tell about fire. No one can know my friend Gig except those who knew him alive, alive and flying, laughing and showing you the sweet of life, joking away the sour.
Cherish those who lift your spirits in these doom-heavy days. They deal in praise not blame. They blunt the sharp edge of sorrows. Their zest for life cancels out the wear and tear of the world’s frustrations. Cherish them – a shield against the anger all around us.
