Let Me Find the Courage To Let the World Break My Heart
Digging deep
I’m afraid. Afraid of my country and afraid for my country.
Afraid of fascists and bullies, and people with far too much power who care only about themselves. Afraid in my bones, in the deepest places inside me where my darkest fears reside.
I don’t imagine I’m alone these days in trying hard not to give in to feelings of despair.
I’m looking out my window at the rhododendrons that do so beautifully here, that stay stubbornly green and alive even when covered in snow and ice. That manage to thrive and give their gift of beauty in so many diverse places around the world.
The oldest fossil records of rhododendrons are 50 million years old. That’s a long time to work on one’s coping skills—a long enough time, I guess, to ready oneself to deal with just about any disaster dealt to us by Nature or history.
I want to learn from those brave green buds that rise like little candle-flames in a spiral above the leaves, some of them spent but most of them simply tough and leathery, prepared for whatever lies ahead, their beauty packed tightly away for now inside them.
I want to find the courage keep working every day on a work of fiction that will, like all my novels, take a long time to write—that will require me to go spelunking through the past and believe with all my heart in the future.
Spring has come to Connecticut, although it’s still cold. The birds are busy outside. They know perfectly well what their work is—and they never stop doing it.
I sometimes wonder about these big brains of ours—how well do they serve us, really? What other living thing stresses about its purpose in life?
Everything else just keeps going at full blast during the growing season: creates its fruits and flowers, makes deeper connections with the earth. Stores energy and its own immortality in its seeds, if it’s an annual. Stores energy in the hardest, toughest places in itself, and in its roots underground, if it’s a perennial—and then dies or dies back with serenity when winter comes.
What other living thing argues with winter? Says, Wait! I’m not done yet. I’ve done too little.
What other living things judge their performance in life? Has any plant ever evinced even a nanosecond of regret?
Trees just keep growing upward toward the source of light and life, wrapping their roots around the soil, receiving its gifts and cleansing the air of carbon in an unthinking act of community service.
No tree has ever thought, Who cares about everyone else? Who cares about those oxygen-breathers whose lungs would be poisoned by the carbon in the air if I didn’t keep it locked up inside me?
Even the tallest tree has never said to the world, Me, me, me! As long as I’m thriving, as long as I’m not threatened, all those other living things can just go to hell.
I tell myself that whatever I am, and whatever I’ve been, is connected to everything else. Whatever filagree I’ve woven out of words is the offering I have inside me: I was born with all the seeds of all I’ll produce before I die.
Let me nurture them, coax them out into the light and air: some books, a brilliant son whose heart is golden. A pass-key into the immortal world of poetry that gives its gifts to the world as unthinkingly as the trees, birds and flowers give theirs.
It’s a privilege to be alive in this broken world. To offer up whatever I have in my giving to what has to be a collective project of repair.
Let me be brave enough to let the world break my heart!
Can I love the world enough to let my heart be broken? Am I brave enough to keep my eyes open while so much that I took for granted falls apart? Let me serve as apprentice to leafless winter trees who know how to hide their bounty of blossoms until the season is right. Let me love the world enough to unearth whatever bounty is cached inside me. Let me offer up whatever gifts I have without judgment or fear. Let it be enough. When the flame of my own life burns low, let me learn to love the pale light of stars and find my way in the dark. Let me embrace my time among all that grows and gives and thrives. Let me bloom with joy and fade without shame. Copyright ©️ 2025 by Barbara Quick
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