Giving Up

It is that time of year when you must give up. The need to remain green gives way to the desire to bear fruit – even though you know the fruit will be other, and not you. You surrender to the hot and sapping sun, the flow of the warm river and the chuckle of the gulls; for it is autumn, and all you want to do is weep for the loss of your substance.

Yet it isn't the first dead summer of your life, nor the first fall. There will be winter after this, and you have survived many winters. Your historical mind, the mind that is an alchemist's, the mind perceiving, the mind half-convinced by experiment – all these minds conspire to tell you that you will survive. And perhaps you will, perhaps it is indeed the most likely alternative. But for now, it is the sharp cliff edge between the height and the plain, the salt water and the sea strand.

Do you feel like giving up?

Before you do, think about what exactly it is that you're giving up. Here's a poem from my idealistic educator days.

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The Places of Compassion

Don't look for me
in the quiet places of social graces, I am too sore,
too hurt to linger there.

Don't look for me
in the midst of pinwheeling crowds, turning under the winds
of trends and status; for I am stationary in the midst
of such revolutions.

Look for me mirrored
from the desperate eyes of addicts, the freezing eyes
of homeless, and the starving eyes of children who don't know
what hunger they feel when they fall.

That's where you'll find me,
with gentle hands cupping the face of realities,
my movements belly deep, my laughter non-existent.

That's where you'll find me,
standing strong and spread under my crown of sky with
the last velvet of the hunted scraped against my shins.

That's where you'll find me,
in the most unlikely place, with the commonest and closest
of things.

Ruth Solomon>