Seven Pages of Solitude

There was no way to know that this moment would turn up like this right now, with this cast of characters forming this specific context. It is Christmas. So temporal, so short, so flimsy that I can see right through it. The flimsiness of it makes me want to break it. I know I can.
At the end of all things it means close to nothing - like a kid who does a job for a quarter. It is only a quarter. It is a piece of extra change, and if it got dropped behind the dresser no one would notice. Yet, to that kid it means the world. It is just a day, just a Christmas day in the 21st century. Like a kid who misunderstands currency, we place too much weight on a day.

But it is a day: a holiday, a remembrance day. A day to remember how involved, or not, we have been in our own lives as we face the close of another year. Well, here it comes: closing fast, closing tight with all its mountain peaks and valley depths, stationary, painted onto the canvas of our past. On the frame of this piece will be a little gold plated rectangle with the numbers 2-0-0-7 engraved into it. That will jog our memory as to the anatomy of the particular peaks and valleys years from now. Without that label it would blend into the last set, or the next set, or a set tens years ago.

At the end of my life I imagine myself walking down a long corridor, pausing at each frame with its own little number, and then I’ll look up and realize that despite the frames and three inches of wall between each, they become a solid stretching mountain range. One unbroken range lined up in front of me. Who but me - or you - could have scaled those peaks or waded those depths? They are all circumstances created that I climbed over or under or through. Each lake of tears that reveals my reflection and each sunburst of laughter painted throughout: they are mine. It is my painting, my life that I’ll look back on.

As I gaze towards 2008 I have no idea what to expect, and yet I know exactly what is coming: peaks, valleys, tears, laughter and all that will be painted in between. It won’t be easy. It never is. It won’t be ideal, but the real quality of the mess and the places that come up short are what make it me.

The best things in life barely ever sprout fully grown. The things that surprise us with their good fullness usually don’t begin that way. Time is needed for discovery, exploration, formation, growth, maturity, and then finally figuring out how to reproduce. Some people try to speed up the process, thinking that until a plant bears fruit it can’t be considered a true plant. That, however, does not do justice to the life of these plants in our lives.

It is not a hard job for a plant to bear fruit. It is the natural function a plant, and a regular part of its life cycle. If the plant were to stop drinking or eating the nutrients from the soil or if it were to hide its face from the sun, only then would it stop bearing fruit. Much more would be wrong than a lack of fruit. It would not be able to live if this were the case. The life of a plant and the presence of fruit go together, like peas in a pod.

The fruit is not simply to look showy on the plant, or to taste good to those who eat it. Both of these characteristics are functions of the plant that allow it to spread its seed and multiply the amount of plants like itself. Once the fruit is eaten and enjoyed, the animal or person moves on and takes the seed with it. Then, a little ways down the road the seed will be deposited into new soil in a new place to begin the cycle all over again.

The purpose of fruit is to disseminate the seed, so that the plant can multiply. I find so many people are focused on how many pieces of fruit can be found on each branch of their lives, and so many people worried that theirs isn’t big enough yet – but I don’t know that I’ve ever come across many people who have thought further than that., and if its fulfilling its function as that. Whether fruit is present or not is not nearly as important as fruit that is present fulfilling its function.

Different trees have different fruit, and different fruit will attract different creatures to eat it. Some will be able to get through the tough outer wall to the good flesh inside of the durian, but others will stick to the ease and sweetness of the strawberry or blueberry or pear. Others will appreciate the tang of citrus, and still others will desire bananas more than anything. The variety of fruit is numerous, and so are the types and styles of consumers.

How dare we judge the differences in each other and the purposes of each other’s lives based on what we know to be true about our own? How dare we look down our noses at the shape or color or taste of another person’s fruit? How dare we brush each other off with a laugh if we don’t understand in the first minute?

We are in danger of discarding the odd or small looking out of the way plant because we haven’t seen it bear fruit yet. We are in danger of sticking to industrially produced quick-grow seed because we’ve seen it work before in other people’s lives. Or worse – we are in danger of discouraging each other to the point of abandoning who we are and what we love. We need to make space for the quirky small plant that takes longer to grow and spout and bear fruit. Homogeneity follows in the wake of impatience, and I am not willing to settle for that.

As for the plants in my life? I want to enjoy the discovery, the exploration and the formation of them. I want to revel in the growth and be able to love what they are in every stage they go through – from the smallest and unnoticed to the flashiest and obvious. I want to enable each person I come across to be able to do the same with their own.

Dear darkening ground,
You’ve endured so patiently the walls we’ve built,
perhaps you’ll give the cities one more hour
and grant the churches and cloisters two.

And those that labor - will you let their work
grip them for another five hours, or seven,
before you become forest again, and water, and widening
wilderness

in that hour of inconceivable terror
when you take back your name
from all things.

Just give me a little more time!
I want to love the things
as no one has thought to love them,
until they’re worthy of you and real.

I want only seven days, seven
on which no one has ever written himself -
seven pages of solitude.

There will a book that includes these pages,
and the one who takes it in his hands
will long sit staring at it,
until he feels you holding him
and writing through him.

– Rainer Maria Rilke
Rilke’s Book of Hours, The Book of a Monastic Life, I.61