Tuesday, December 3, 2024: 

We are here to learn to endure the beams of love. 


I have quoted my own version of a William Blake line for so long now that I like to think it's mine:

 We are here to learn to endure the beams of love.


I have lived by these words for nearly fifty years ever since I first read the quote. 

It is the sentence I want my family to remember when I am gone.

(Also, I hope they forget that someone else said it and that I get the credit.)


This is a radical idea, absolutely contrary to everything I was raised to believe. 

I was taught to strive, to feel ashamed, to keep the family secrets to believe I was better than, yet always in danger of lagging behind. 


I was taught to judge and surpass and above all to showcase a shiny surface 

of confidence, individualism, and self-sufficiency. 



We were not a playful family; we were amused. I was taught to observe other people's mediocrity and general ruin, and to make quiet and arch comments about it. 


What Blake is saying is that none of those things are who I am or why I am here. 

But without them, who on earth am I? Still a student? Aging, set in her ways —moi?


And to bear the beams of love: What a nightmare. No thanks. 

The cold vibrating spaces inside us protect us and keep us on our toes. 

Love breaks your heart and love makes you soft. It gets in past your 

Brooks Brothers armor and makes your skin as permeable as the little green tree frog my friend Caroline found in her shower. 



If you practice enduring people's bewildering love for you, it will change you molecularly: it loosens you, gooses you, warms you. Bearing the beams of love can dislodge ancient sachets of joy, pain, shame, and pride trapped inside you, and make you smell strange and funny, like soup. So maybe don't.


You are not stupid. Love can leave bruises on the heart, an oceanic ache. 

When you give someone your best love, you too are filled with warmth.


 The world can be so lame, disappointing, and even mean, like an alcoholic father towering over us. But we can't give up on love batting last or we are truly doomed. 



As Carl Sagan said, "For small creatures such as we, the vastness is bearable only through love." 


I consulted my six-year-old colleague to see if he could amplify his earlier statement that love is, well, you know, this stuff. "Tell me more, if you can," I said. "What is love?"

He thought this over a moment. "It's like, you know—duh."


That is all we need to know, not the Greek delineations from Eros, passionate love, to agape, selfless divine love; or my own addition, mascotas, the love of our animals. It's this feeling, this energy exchange of affection, compassion, kindness, warmth, hope. Duh.


Anne Lamott from her book Somehow

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