understand

I learned this poem decades ago. Now I truly understand it.

Keats writes about the scene on the urn, praises its eternal nature, then says, speaking to the urn,

When old age shall this generation waste,
Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe

Than ours, a friend to man, to whom thou say’st,

Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.

I have never understood this last stanza. Sure, the urn will be around when we are gone, and sure, people will look at it. But how is it that “Beauty is truth, truth beauty”? To me they are more often separate. And how is it that “that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know”? Surely there is more.

Okay, today I was on the porch with Nick and I looked over to the left. Sunlight was shining through the trees, and the leaves were silver with sunlight. It took my breath away. It was transcendent. And suddenly that poem came into my mind and I understood. Nothing joins us with the eternal, with those who have gone before and those who will come after, like the beautiful things that endure and that will be here long after we are gone. Some November day, some other woman may stand and look at those same trees or at their progeny, and the sunlight-silvered leaves will take her breath away, and in that moment, she will be me and she will be some future person who does not yet exist, and she will be, in that moment, as large as the universe. That beauty is all she can know on earth, and all she needs to know.

Oh yeah!

and it takes a while for the light bulb to go on.

When it does, it is a epiphany, a revelation. I would like to write about such moments here.

This is my spirituality. I get more satisfaction from this goal than from everything else in my life. I want to be as close to reality as I possibly can be. I want to understand.

I’m having a hard time understanding people. There are times when I find myself fully engaged in a conversation with someone and I’m actually doing my very best to understand them.

There are also times – several recently – when I’m not trying to understand a person at all, but instead I want them to understand my point of view. Usually I want to be right, and I want acknowledgment for being right.

This is an issue that comes up for me from time to time, and here is how I deal with it.

1. let them have it—if someone won’t shut up until they’re right, but simply acknowledge what they said, without lying to them and telling them they’re right, but simply not provoking the person or wasting my energy arguing.
2. breathe—I wait until the other person is finished speaking, then I take a deep breath and pause before speaking again. This way I develop patience instead of just waiting for someone to shut up so I can speak.
3. recapping—after someone has explained something to me, I repeat what they just said and ask them if I understood them correctly. If not, all have them explain again, then all recap again until we understand each other. Once we understand them, then I can express my points with consideration.

I agree with the “other” on this. It is not something simple. It is an overall relation to others. I want to be able to automatically see things through other’s eyes AND UNDERSTAND! This will help me in my everyday relationships. (big ones and small ones)

- Tru

My understanding is not about all, nor any one thing in particular. I just need to learn to listen and relate, with people and all that surrounds me. I struggle in doing so because my mind is in a million different places. Practicing being in the moment is where I’m at right now…

My heaven is a giant room full of recordings of the memories of every person that ever lived. That’s what I’d spend eternity doing- watching them. I wish i could be everything, everyone, the entire universe.

recognition isn’t here, only my undying fear,
why should my life be this way, for which I struggle everyday,
I know down inside my soul, that life is so damn beautiful,
so why should I have to go by,lost alone and so deprived,
too often it seams to me, as though I’m in a lucid dream,
its something that I’ve come to see is that its my reality,
but what if some day I awake a different person in a different place,
even though my life is rough its what I know and come to love,
how can I go on living if I don’t walk the line I’m given
how can I expect to thrive if I live a different life
i think now I understand, this is me, its Gods plan

but this goal was not to “understand it all.” That would be impossible. I understand what I need to in order to move forward. Now to get moving.

As the winter slowly recedes from the landscape, I see the mottled brown-gray grass that constitutes my backyard. It has been bereft of the sight of the sun for so long, but not of the memory. Soon it shall return, grow, and prosper.

Outside my window this past week, flying above the yard, I have enjoyed the sight and sound of a lost seagull. In the waning winter of mid-Michigan, in the heart of our small city, we are rarely treated to the sound of the sea…once so familiar to those of us who traveled here from afar. It is the first time that I have ever seen a seagull here, and I am struck by how sad it makes me feel.

Days go by. It rains, it snows, and the sometimes even the sun peeks through the opacity of the gray. The seagull disappears, but never for long. When he returns, his arrival is harkened by the same bleak cry of longing…regret. Today he simply stood on my back porch stoop, and cried out into the gray. As much as one can attempt to (foolishly) detect emotion in a different species, I sense his confusion when he sits on the other side of the glass and peers in at me. I wonder if his cries are jubilation for his newfound occupation, floating above and exploring my dead backyard, or if he is secretly crying out to the faraway sea in the hopes that someday it might answer him, and he can find his way home.

I am haunted by the simple power of this lonely seagull in the city, and hope that he soon finds what it is that he is looking for. Maybe soon I’ll find what I’m looking for, will return to where I need to be, will grow, and will prosper.