“Beauty is Truth, Truth Beauty –
that is all you know on earth,
and all you need to know.” – John Keats
I was reading yesterday about how the English poet John Keats wrote “Ode to a Grecian Urn” while he was dying from tuberculosis at age 24. As tragic as that is for him, my mind immediately thought of his mother and how she must have felt. Clearly my becoming a mother has altered the angle from which I think about life. I’ve heard of decisions like mine to become a mother described as sliding glass moments – moments where you can see life on the other side and choose whether to open the door and cross the threshold.
I’m fascinated by our sliding glass moments because they define the major plot lines of our lives. They are the story we tell others when we first meet. I was stuck in traffic at 29-years-old and just had broken up with my boyfriend when I saw Mt. Rainier majestically sitting in front of me and decided to climb mountains. I was 39-years-old and my business partner invited me out to lunch to tell me of my husband’s infidelities and my life as I then knew it changed forever. I was 45-years-old and decided that I wanted to have kids and was willing to do it alone rather than rush a relationship that might not be right for all of us.
But as showy as those moments are, I think it’s equally telling how we live each day between them. Before my business partner told me about my husband’s infidelities I was drinking at least a bottle of wine each day trying to numb the fact that I was in a relationship I wasn’t supposed to be in. After he told me, I found meditation and the inner peace that comes with leaning towards life instead of away from it. Before I had babies I would cry hearing any story about the miracle of birth. After I had my kids, I practice my gratitude by writing at least one thing down every day for my gratitude box. If sliding glass moments are the plot lines, I think our daily habits must be the language and tone of how our stories are written.
I looked up the story of John Keats and found his dad died when he was 8-years-old and his mom died when he was 14-years-old. I imagine that his genius was in part defined by those moments and the words he wrote the way he lived each day processing them. Altogether they formed the life that brought the words to us – “Beauty is Truth, Truth Beauty” – and in reading those we find the echo of both in our own lives: the truth of the big moments and the beauty of our days.
Surprised By Joy 