Three Wise Men

When a beloved friend wrote from overseas to say he was “drowning in melancholy,” I wondered sadly what had already happened to the wave of super-optimism that flashed briefly earlier this year. I had surged with a sense of possibility, creatively, and knew a rush of hope for the environmental and social disaster our world has become. It seemed that the wave was universal, and headlines everywhere proclaimed the urgency of the planet’s welfare.

And then…what goes up, must come down. Can we really effect change at all? Does the ripple effect even have time to…well, ripple- before we run out of water? Can we actually feed the kids who are starving, solve the greenhouse effect, control cancer, replenish the soil’s minerals, and live without racial, gender or other prejudices? Truth is, I doubt it.

My Germanic intellectual pragmatism says even if we magically get it all right tonight, all of us, everywhere, and start dedicated action first thing in the morning, we can’t stop fate. There’s not enough water and too many chemicals and drugs. We can’t agree with our next-door neighbours on which God is right, if any, and what to do with the local homeless. So we’ll never agree with the hundreds of other countries and their pressing agendas. War has prevailed from the beginning of history, and so have gluttony, greed, rape, and murder.

So pervading my emotional self, the one that exhilarates in finding meaning in coincidences and hope in love’s possibilities, the girl who trusts in transcendent mythic journeys, and believes in signs, portents, and spiritual dimensions, the manic, elated producer of an overflowing fountain of art and poetry that can only come from pure soul-pervading that is a more practical self. It’s the “me” that knows the gig is up no matter what we do, at least in this world.

Then, another aspect joins in the chorus of the ever-churning mind: the sardonic, cynical smartass in me knows that fate will wink when sheer weeks before running out of air to breathe and the whole of us choking on atoms of manufactured plastic crap clogging our lungs, a sun storm will gobble us up the way thousands of planets disappear into the sun all the time. A natural, cosmic occurrence of gases and flames will make moot our bent on self-destruction.

Oops, so much for trying.

So what’s the point then, you ask? What’s the point of getting up in the morning and reveling in thankfulness for the clear, sunny day? What’s the point in going to work or school and fulfilling your potential? What’s the point in recycling or attending NA meetings? Why not fuel up on hydrogenated poisons? Why bother completing a painting, or giving life-saving surgery, or sponsoring a child in Ecuador?

I never understood clearly when I was a kid why my dad told me the reason for doing the right thing is simply because it is right. Simple, but hard for me to get a handle on. Dad: the reason you should do the right thing is because it is the right thing to do. Here as an adult, I’m still way too attached to the outcome. You can’t control shit, but you’re still 100 per cent responsible for the stuff you do. So do your damn best.

Responsible to whom, you ask? I can’t answer that. I may not believe what you do. But there’s right and wrong and though humans have never been good at figuring it out, there are a few we all agree on without argument- be kind to old ladies and don’t kill and torture people, for example. You may not be able to change what your politicians do, but asking them to do it is still your responsibility. What might happen if we all wake up and feel possibility and demand to stop the ridiculous greed and killing? The sun may still fulfill the prophecy that the world will not be destroyed by flood again-or it may not. But every day lived from here on in will be lived fuller, better, stronger, more amazing. I’m going to try my very best.

The friend who wrote how he is drowning in melancholy I have known for a long, long time, (he is now a Buddhist monk) and I know from his cycles that soon he will write with the understanding that occasional submerging in despair is a quiet, dark time of the soul that lies in wait of answers. Paul McCartney: “Let it be, let it be, let it be, let it be, there will be an answer, let it be….”

My friend is on the other side of the world, and we are not able to be together right now on our divergent paths, but his thoughts mirror mine today as he writes, “ I cannot give up on spiritual life until I have exhausted every last possibility.”

Another of my most trusted spiritual advisors I have never met, brilliant thinker Thomas Moore, who wrote about despair in Dark Nights of the Soul. “Imagination is everything,” he reminds me in case my practical self doubted what my heart believes so wholly. “Because we can’t know or experience anything outside our imagination of it. But the imagination can be old, tired, and irrelevant. It needs to be revived continually.”

Lorette C. Luzajic
thegirlcanwrite.net
you can order my book through amazon or indigo online!

Dolly Parton’s Book of the Month Club

It makes perfect sense that Dolly Parton’s favourite kids’ book is The Little Engine That Could. Ms. Parton is herself an unstoppable train, who knows no limits as a musician, artist, fashionista, businesswoman and philanthropist. Her imagination is spectacular- did you know that one of the instruments Dolly used to accompany her vocals on smash hit Nine to Five was her acrylic fingernails?

It may appear that Dolly’s life is all rhinestones and glitter- she often jokes that “it costs a lot too look this cheap.” Most know that Dolly was raised dirt poor in a one room shack with a heap of youngin’s in the Smoky Mountains. And many know that Dolly created Dollywood to give her friends, cousins, and siblings decent work. Now how was it that I worked for a decade in the book industry/literacy/literature world and somehow didn’t hear about Dolly’s Imagination Library?

How’s this for a class act? If you are aged zero to five, Dolly Parton will mail you a book each and every month! The awesome literacy program, which Dolly spearheaded in her own community in 1996, has spread to more than 500 counties across North America. The first book each child receives is The Little Engine that Could, and then kids can eagerly await their monthly treasures, carefully selected by Dolly and a team of experts, and provided by Penguin Books.

Dolly funds the project herself, through proceeds from her cookbook, theme park, and donors, and through fundraising work for literacy. Head to www.imaginationlibrary.com to make a donation, or to get involved. Or, consider using Dolly’s inspiration and commit to some kind of book club for your niece, godchild, or an underprivileged neighbour. Perhaps you can take that time once a month to read the story to him or her- it would make a unique chance for him to learn a few reading skills and to see the doors that his imagination can open!

www.thegirlcanwrite.net

Lorette C. Luzajic