Word After Word

When you are going through a difficult time people are going to tell you what to do. They will be very certain: Hire this person. Don’t speak to that person. They may even suggest excessive faxing, filing, and phoning. They will say what you should let go of and not think about and what you should also be thinking about constantly. Everything they are saying is good and right. You will be told to take care of yourself and also make everything go great. They’ll see the order and logic of the situation—and so will you. The perfect world is easy, clear, comprehensible, and agreed upon. It’s like pie or good TV. Moral vision is not complex or difficult—it makes sense to all of us.

But the world can’t line up straight with moral vision. The world always refuses to co-operate. The friendly, good well-meaning advice all contradicts itself and makes no sense while also making the perfect (moral justice) sense.

My friend B calls this poetic justice. The situation unravels, glorious, messy, overwhelming, petty, and sad, and true.

David Whyte writes that the only antidote to exhaustion is whole heartedness. Engagement with the writing life (or anything like your writing life, such as Friday Night Lights, Prospect Park, the beach in autumn in Michigan at mid-morning, a volume of Rilke, Olds, or a little Lear, or the children’s section in the community library) is how to bridge the gap between moral (in)justice and poetic justice.