Healing of Ordinary Mind

On Labor Day weekend it’s good to remember that work has helped to shape us into the persons we have become. The point is to not make the accumulation of money a life goal. Here’s how Judge Jack Ethridge puts it: “Learn as much as you can. Make money to keep the pressure off. Believe that you’re lucky, and go where the action is. But above all, life-meaning comes from the love you have for other people.” Here is a poem from my upcoming book that, I hope, connects the struggles of work to “the cure of the everyday.” Thanks, Gene B.

“Healing of Ordinary Mind”

My late eighties are a time to revisit
the power of positive thinking,
since it’s harder to bring about.
Stiff joints and deeper fatigue,
naps to get by, my life force
running down, no easy cure.
Suffering of sentient beings
in Job, Lear and other classics
testify to universal pain at every turn.
Yet our age of plenty wants to reject
every ache of ordinary consciousness
with dangerous drugs and thousands of suicides.
My Italian ancestors found uplift
from lives of work without recourse
to pills and needles, only to homemade vino.
In the age of Pharma for every discomfort,
these elders would have let the cure
of the everyday penetrate awareness,
like my two cats following me to greet the day
on our screened porch enveloped in birdsong,
with the smell of fresh coffee bringing hope.
It’s about opening to such beauty at hand,
giving it time to warm breath and soul,
healing our moments even in decline.