In nature, death gives way to life.

The process of becoming cycles through little deaths and rebirths every day.

An early spring sunrise from the perspective of my backyard in northern Indiana, 2021.

Hope is not folly. It is not a sublime phantasm that leads the masses to its preferred source of opiates. It is real. It is hearty. It withstands even the grittiest internal furies and the most passive subservience to indifference. It is the only thing upon which I can thrive, because it is what drives me to keep on living and to discover, and rediscover, what lives on within and around and beyond me, what grows strong again.

For the audio version of this essay, please click on the voice clip below:

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This is a reflection I chose to delete from my current book-in-progress.

The park’s path circles back to me. I observe the blades of grass, clearly overgrown and beginning to bolt, rustle as the leaves on the oaks and maples and sycamores cascade to their autumnal descent. Each shaft of grass is like wheat, planted as mere seed and kept secret from the world in which it is surrounded. It springs forth in due time and reveals itself as more than a single strand among many like it.

Everything dies. I forget that. In ages past, the masses obsessed about death and nothing else, as if there were nothing more to it than dissolving into emptiness. In today’s age, most of us forget that we were once ash and dirt. Life, my life, is about claiming happiness, joy, and delight in each moment, while also considering the impact of my long-term choices.

Happiness is not the highest moral good, however. I’ve learned that lesson well.

I’ve found that, as with all else in the world, happiness does not last. It, too, ends, sometimes quickly and sometimes gradually. It is contingent upon my emotions in a specific speck of time, or about a specific person or life change, but it is not permanently etched in the fabric of my soul, of my existence. Death is.

I am speaking of all the little deaths I neglect to acknowledge on an ordinary day, like when I secretly hoard the last stash of strawberries in the fridge but my daughter finds them and asks if she can have them—and I say yes. The moments when I want to linger in bed for another five or ten minutes, but my youngest walks in and says he is hungry—so I stagger to the kitchen and feed him.

The little deaths are the hardest to accept, because cumulatively, they compound my self-denial.

These little deaths are not the true end of my existence and never were. Not the infertility or inexperience in handling small children or the onerous charting of my reproductive cycle and planned intercourse. Not the pregnancies or birthing or postpartum weeks or sleep deprivation. Not the weight gain or volatile mood spells or time tax on health care and caregiving.

These deaths act as the finale for which I have sought, and continue to seek: passages, portals. This is true every time I face another crossroads, as I do while sauntering the winding walking track at the park. Do I choose to turn left, right, or straight ahead? There is never a clear-cut, straightforward solution. Every choice involves a mélange of consequences I can’t fathom in the moment of making the decision. Still, I must make one. Regardless of what I choose, it will cost me something: a surrender or a relinquishing of self to the great unknown, to which I defer not in vain, but in confidence now.

In nature, death gives way to life. To grow strong again is the realization that death is not optional, but necessary in order to fully thrive.

Hope is not folly. It is not a sublime phantasm that leads the masses to its preferred source of opiates. It is real. It is hearty. It withstands even the grittiest internal furies and the most passive subservience to indifference. It is the only thing upon which I can thrive, because it is what drives me to keep on living and to discover, and rediscover, that which lives on within and around and beyond me, what grows strong again.

I pen this poem to capture the essence of my thoughts:

I died the day you were born—
Life to death,
Death to life.

All beginnings
Fray and fade
Into endings.

And endings
Rise and return
To their life-source.

There really are no
Beginnings or endings,
Only transition—
Only transformation.

Your life capsized mine,
But I am because you are.
I live because you live
In and through and beyond me.

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