Tag Archives: joy

Trinity

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This poem today is one I’ve been working on for a long, long time. It’s something I’ve been thinking about for much longer than the time I originally put anything on paper that would end becoming a poem. For the last few years I’ve been contemplating what makes us all happy and sad and I’ve also spent a lot of time exploring the concepts of certainty and uncertainty. It didn’t take me long to realize that certainty is a myth (in anything but the past, and not even always then), an idea I will stand behind until the day I die.

I also, after one of my longer written meditations, decided that uncertainty can be something that we either let destroy us or free us. I’ve decided that uncertainty is a beautiful thing-it’s what makes life worth living. The biggest crisis I’ve ever had in my life came when I realized that if I were to pursue the career I had studied four years in college, my future would too obvious, too neat for me. I was terrified by how neatly the path was laid out from year one to retirement, with pay scales already figured out year-by-year, and sorted into different categories depending on certifications. I may be the minority in this, but having everything laid out so carefully makes me sick. I cherish uncertainty because however it may turn on me and bite me, there’s always that promise of something spectacular. And if it doesn’t work out, I still had that moment where I believed that just maybe I would strike gold. And I never failed to acknowledge almost every risk involved, but the challenge excited me, and it still does.

I explored all this once in a poem you can find on an earlier post entitled “Monster”, but only recently did I begin to consider the aftermath of these risks and how they result in my happiness or unhappiness. That moment of uncertainty may always excite me, but the end result can crush me as easily as it can bring me joy. This made me wonder if my love of uncertainty really made sense for my hapiness, and what made one result so much better for me than another? In looking back at past experiences, I came to realize that my happiest and darkest moments all came from one source, and so it was only my expectations (the past) and my perceptions of the present and future that created joy or a lack thereof. While I still have a lot of thinking to do on all of this, the simplest way of putting it is that our happiness is really a constant that we manipulate all the time as we go through our lives, and, as even a false certainty can fill me with fear, I believe this manipulation-though we may try to gain some control over it-is a good and necessary order. 

I hope you enjoy the thoughts I’ve tried to put together in this poem.

 

Trinity

 

It is one of my few strong convictions in life

That uncertainty is both a saint and a demon,

And impossible to live without.

 

For though I have experienced so little,

I have felt such pure joy, peace and contentment

That sorrow not just seemed impossible,

But the concept itself was beyond my ability to comprehend.

 

And yet I have felt it,

Deeply and overwhelmingly,

As if each day were December 21st.

I came to know darkness much better

Than I ever would have expected

As it snaked its way up and around me.

 

But the sun returned,

And though at first I didn’t trust in the sincerity

Of his apologies,

He stayed.

 

But ever since I’ve been searching always

For the answer to what makes me happy?

Who invites pain in?

And always, when I go back in my mind

Over any path I’ve taken,

I find that the closer I am to its beginning,

The more familiar I begin to recognize it,

Until I reach a trailhead too familiar,

Which, though I had believed to be walking along

Joy or misery,

Always reads: “Uncertainty.”

 

Now I have come to a realization that—

Thought until today has eluded me—

Has defined my entire life;

My values, my beliefs, my tastes.

 

It is that happiness, sorrow and uncertainty

Are all the same; a trinity.

And this trinity both necessitates and requires unique experiences,

Which make up every moment of our lives,

And our inexperience,

Coupled with our inability to fully understand our worlds,

And more so, our selves,

Turn it different shades so that we believe it

To be different from itself.

 

But it remains the same as it always was

 

So if this is true,

Can it be that our perceptions alone

Can deceive us into believing that this one path

Can be so different, so hurtful, so healing?

 

I think back to times in my life

When my eyes have been so stained by love

That on this path each tree was in bloom,

And cherry petals filled the air,

Enveloping me in a lovely pink snowstorm.

 

But loss and self-doubt, too,

Have cast crippling tints over all I see,

So that I found my path amidst a tangle of naked branches,

Thorns ripping into me through a perpetual new moon night.

 

And with what little experience I have,

I know I can do nothing to remove the shadows

Cast upon my trail.

 

I feel too strongly, too passionately, too irrationally

To attempt to subvert the influence of my emotions.

 

Nor would I ever want to,

For how could Spring’s life and hope be better received

Than for it to follow those

Last weeks of bleakest late-winter?

 

And to be robbed of the beauty and soul and art

Of suffering

Would be an unimaginable tragedy.

 

Yet still,

Never again will there be any mistaking

That I walk always forward along one path,

And whatever the last mile has been,

And whatever it looks like when I turn the next corner,

Nothing will have changed but me.

 

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