Daring

“…this blundering world –

No matter what I bring against it,

Not once have I managed to get at it:

With all my floods, fires, earthquakes, tempests,

Unshaken in the end are land and sea!

And this damned trash, this brood of brutes and men,

There’s no way you can get the best of them.

How many of them I’ve already buried!

Some fresh blood ‘s always in circulation.”  

                

-       (All quotes are from Faust, by Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe, translated by Randall Jarrell)

Here’s Mephistopheles, talking to Faust about human goodness and resilience, basically admitting that no matter what challenges he’s thrown at the world, goodness has always found a way to survive in Nature itself, and in human nature. 

I find this quote particularly uplifting, as it helps me to rebalance and refocus  my attention from all that's problematic, to all that's good and helpful and resilient.

It’s easy these days, and it’s probably always been easy, to focus and be overwhelmed by all that is wrong in the world. Yet, while we cannot and should not close our eyes to the harshest and most disturbing parts of life, as Mephistopheles admits, it’s important to remember that throughout time, throughout the worst atrocities and deprivations, throughout corruption and ignorance, beauty and goodness have survived. It seems that somehow, we humans have an instinct, an innate knowing of what is good and right, whether we act on it or not. 

So when you feel yourself overrun with despair and negativity, when you find yourself starting to believe that we humans are doomed to error and destruction, take heart and trust that, as Faust proclaims, it is worth daring to be human in this world:

“Here I am, here I dare to be, human”.

I love how Faust put that. Yes, to be human in the world at any time is a daring thing. We must dare to be vulnerable, to be ignorant, to be mislead. We must dare to jump in knowing that we will hurt and be hurt, knowing that we will make mistakes and fail. But it is precisely in this daring that we will find our beauty,  our vulnerability, and our trust in life and in each other.

It is fully and deliberately embracing this daring to be human, and the uncertainty that goes along with it, that to me, gives meaning to living life.

Peace