...some words about some words.
Happy Friday to those who celebrate!
B and I finished season four of Ted Lasso last night. I'm not sure if it'll get renewed for a fifth season or if it's over for good, again, but I found the ending sequence quite beautiful, particularly Mae's voiceover of the Mary Oliver poem When Death Comes, which always gives me a real kick in the pants, especially this part:
When it's over, I want to say: all my life
I was a bride married to amazement.
I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.When it's over, I don't want to wonder
if I have made of my life something particular, and real.
I don't want to find myself sighing and frightened,
or full of argument.I don't want to end up simply having visited this world.
Whenever I read that last line it reminds me of my favorite section of Joan Didion's commencement address to the UC Riverside class of 1975:
I'm not telling you to make the world better, because I don't think that progress is necessarily part of the package. I'm just telling you to live in it. Not just to endure it, not just to suffer it, not just to pass through it, but to live in it. To look at it. To try to get the picture. To live recklessly. To take chances. To make your own work and take pride in it. To seize the moment.
And if you ask me why you should bother to do that, I could only tell you that the grave's a fine and private place, but none I think do there embrace. Nor do they sing there, or write, or argue, or see the tidal bore on the Amazon, or touch their children. And that's what there is to do and get it while you can and good luck at it.
Which eventually leads me to this Frederick Buechner quote:
“Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Don't be afraid.”
We could connect these dots with the advice of our ancestors until the cows come home, but the throughline seems simple enough: it's gonna be bumpy, but take the ride anyway, and don't forget to look out the damn window.
Do you have a favorite poem or quote that stops you in your tracks? Share it with me, if you'd like.