HOPE MONTH: DAY 21: “I believe that imagination is stronger than knowledge. That myth is more potent than history. That dreams are more powerful than facts. That hope always triumphs over experience. That laughter is the only cure for grief. And I believe that love is stronger than death.” ― Robert Fulghum
When I first got into this recovery thing, Robert Fulghum was popular for his writing about “All I Ever Needed to Know I Learned in Kindergarten.” It was inspiring and I read some of his other works. He was so upbeat!
I gravitated toward a great deal of reading during that time that served me very well on this journey. Besides the prescribed literature, I have read, literally, thousands of books about spirituality and the life I was being drawn to in recovery.
Today I read a great deal less. I am more able to live my experiences today, rather than to read about others’. I still read, don’t get me wrong, but much less. I have found many more teachers in the world around me than I once saw. And I spend a great deal more of my time alone than I ever have.
This quote is right on the money for me. Perhaps the first three sentences explain why. I sought validation in books and other people’s experiences of life. That is no longer the case. Today I am satisfied with what I have learned and take very little from others.
There are a few folks with whom I discuss these concepts, but I have “come home” to my own heart and my own set of beliefs in and about life. That is a huge step and it only took 30 years of exploration and learning to listen to my heart-voice.
The fourth and fifth sentences in this quote are more challenging for me to agree with. I don’t know if hope is actually more triumphant, today, over my experience. I think this has shifted in light of time. At first, recovery only made sense when based on hope over where I had been. My experience of getting into recovery was a sad and tragic tale; all of which has been shifted because of later ways of seeing it.
Laughter is not, in my book, the only cure for grief. I believe we get to sit with grief until we recognize that it brings nothing to life, except to deny everything beautiful about it. We will be sad until we learn to live and let live, and to let go of our attachments to people, places and things. Even then, I do not believe there is a cure for grief.
I DO believe that laughter is the cure for self-pity and self-centered indulgence in loss (what I lovingly refer to as wallowing). Life is made up of moments, all of them extremely precious. We must learn to move past our feelings into the place where we embrace life, not just our little corner of it!
And, the final sentence, that love is stronger than death, YES! I love that! Love, to me, is stronger than anything. It wipes out fear, which is what death is all about. Death is not sad or any of those things we attribute to it. It is a shift in consciousness, a new paradigm of life.
I feel a bit of sadness when I move, which has been a lot of my life. There is a letting go, a missing of some of the people with whom I connected in one space. Then there is a filling up of new places, new friends, new meetings, new neighbors, new co-workers and new adventures.
None of this is death, it is all life! Those with whom I have been in relationship and have died and gone on their way are not truly ended. They still live in my heart and my mind and I have as many thoughts of them as I do the people who lived in the last town I lived in also. It is like an extended moving away from me that took place. And the love I felt for them is always going to be there. This is, I believe, a great hopeful way for me to go toward that time in my life when I, too, will move to another space, yet again.
Dolphin Hug 