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Blogs by Richard French
Two Encounters 4/15/2016 4:37:29 PM
I once had two brief chats with people I don't know well that set me thinking.
Always Learning
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I met a woman in the laundry room of the apartment building I live in. I've seen her many times. We usually say, "Hello. Nice day" or "Hello. Lousy weather this afternoon." She's quite senior in years and always has a four-wheeled walker with her. This time, she told me something about her ailments and how she'd lately learned a lot she'd never known before.
I came up with a cliché for reply -- that we never stop learning, to which she responded that there are periods of time during which we learn more than we did for the whole rest of our lives together. I'd never heard that idea before and wondered how it might apply in general. At the very least, it offers encouragement to go on. It's true, many people have learned a lot lately about new technologies and new ways to get what they want to say out to the public. But could there be a really phenomenal spell of learning down the road that we can't foresee now?
Amazing? Amazing!
I went to my bank to make a small deposit and while I was talking with the teller, she said she hoped I would have an amazing 2013. I mumbled something to the effect that we could do with a few amazing things. She replied, "Look on every day as amazing and then things will be fine." I said I'd take her suggestion as one of my watchwords.
Now, I can accept the idea that every day is amazing in the broad sense of the word "amazing" and that all of life is meant to astonish and amaze us, as in Dylan Thomas's wonderful evocation of creation in "Fern Hill": "So it must have been after the birth of the simple light/In the first spinning place, the spellbound horses walking warm/Out of the whinnying green stable/on to the fields of praise."
But there is surely plenty of the humdrum in most everyone's life. Dylan Thomas makes reference to this circumstance, by the way, at the end of "Fern Hill": "Oh as I was young and easy in the mercy of his means,/ Time held me green and dying/Though I sang in my chains like the sea,"
Still, I can accept the notion of amazing days to the extent that every day has something amazing in it, if we open our eyes to see it. For example, last Saturday, I saw a Met Opera broadcast in a Toronto movie theatre of Hector Berlioz' opera "Les Troyens". It was long and parts were slow and undramatic, but much of it was very strong and touched my feelings so that I thought I was lifted to a higher than ordinary level. Amazing. I was very glad to be where I was .
It later occurred to me that there is an amazing amount of stuff in the world that's very, very good. The wonders of nature, of course, but also things that people have made with dedication and skill -- art, scholarship, the achievements of professionalism in many fields, and so on. Everyone will have their own list.
It's easy for many folks, me included, to fret about politics and the economy and forget that a lot that goes on and much of what we have is really very good. Amazing.
