i’ve just finished reading pullman’s ‘his dark materials’, which most of you might better know as the trilogy from which the recent movie ‘the golden compass’ rises.
i have long wondered for my own sanity that i find it is so easy to see glimpses of my life or of others in the things i read. over time, i have become comfortable that it is nothing more than a display of synchronicity or, perhaps, my own willingness to bow to interconnectedness. regardless, i no longer fear it.
i began writing this at about 6am. i stopped after the end of the previous paragraph and have only returned now, at 9:44pm. the full day’s worth of experience settling, i am soon to bed, but re-reading the first two paragraphs, i find myself wondering what i was about to say.
i think the gist of it was that i am delighted and comforted to be able to see myself and others in pretty much everything i encounter. it feels like the process of seeking out lessons rather than waiting for them to arrive, which seems auspicious.
i’ve always said meaning is where you find it. the process of finding so many things meaningful has done quite a lot in a very short span of time to assuage the sense of lacking that was weighing upon me.
so i say in this moment.
nodding briefly to the pattern of cycling that occurs, i ponder whether or not this increased willingness to find meaning and comfort around me, in many things, will help balance the extremes in my head. to some degree, it does so already. i am, of course, impatient and greedy… always want more than i’ve got.
human, still.
the meanings found in pullman’s trilogy deal with a good many things, among which is finding the way to contentment regardless outcomes. this lesson, veiled as the traditional right of passage story, is a keen piece of craftsmanship. it reminded me of those who have passed but are far from forgotten.
i think about pullman’s doorways into other worlds, closing. the sound of those doors shutting has always been a heavy and painful thing to me. it has taken some time to be happy for those who pass through and beyond, to be less than selfish and greedy.
somehow, finding such meaning helps to offset the sense of despair and loss. perhaps it will sound odd, but it seems that being able to find the lessons and outline them to myself in this, as in so many places, makes that sense of despair and loss feel other than pointless.
the struggle with impermanence continues. sometimes it is a simple thing to acknowledge. sometimes i would rather die than do so. in this moment, bound to neither extreme, i can smile.