The Finding of Sincere and Unstunted Delight

[Image: “Little Things, Holding On,” by John E. Simpson. (Photo shared here under a Creative Commons License; for more information, see this page at RAMH.)]

From whiskey river:

Beat doesn’t mean tired or bushed, so much as it means beato, the Italian for beatific; to be in a state of beatitude, like St. Francis, trying to love all life, trying to be utterly sincere with everyone, practicing endurance, kindness, cultivating joy of the heart. How can this be done in our mad modern world of multiplicities and millions? By practicing a little solitude, going off by yourself once in a while to store up that most precious of golds: the vibrations of sincerity.

(Jack Kerouac [source])

…and (from whiskey river’s commonplace book):

I do not think there is anyone who takes quite such a fierce pleasure in things being themselves as I do. The startling wetness of water excites and intoxicates me; the fierceness of fire, the steeliness of steel, the unutterable muddiness of mud… I will not ask you to forgive this rambling levity. I , for one, have sworn, by the sword of God that has struck us, and before the beautiful face of the dead, that the first joke that occurred to me I would make, the first nonsense poem I thought of I would write, that I would begin again at once with a heavy heart at times, as to other duties, to the duty of being perfectly silly, perfectly trivial, and as far as possible, amusing. I have sworn that Gertrude should not feel, wherever she is, that the comedy has gone out of our theatre.

(G. K. Chesterton, in a letter to his fiancée Frances, after the death of her sister Gertrude [source])

…and:

Why ask art into a life at all, if not to be transformed and enlarged by its presence and mysterious means? Some hunger for more is in us—more range, more depth, more feeling; more associative freedom, more beauty. More perplexity and more friction of interest. More prismatic grief and unstunted delight, more longing, more darkness. More saturation and permeability in knowing our own existence as also the existence of others. More capacity to be astonished. Art adds to the sum of the lives we would have, were it possible to live without it. And by changing selves, one by one, art changes also the outer world that selves create and share.

(Jane Hirshfield [source])

Not from whiskey river (nor from its commonplace book):

You are the benefactor of great kindness. And you have no idea how much goodness is lavished on the world by invisible hands. Small selfless deeds engender tremendous force against the darker powers. Great kindness pervades this world, struggling against pernicious selfishness and vulgar narcissism and the vicious streak that is smeared across each human heart—great bounding goodness is rampant and none of it is wasted. No, these small gifts of goodness—this is what saves the soul of man from despair, and that is what preserves humanity from the long fall from the precipice into the abyss.

(Garrison Keillor [source])

…and:

How often do we shed all obligations and feel fully alive, freed from the identity we nonetheless cherish, as we use all our senses and become completely open to experience? Rarely. “We are vaguely wretched,” Walter Kerr writes in The Decline of Pleasure, “because we are leading half-lives, half-heartedly, and with only one-half of our minds actively engaged in making contact with the universe about us.” When we allow ourselves to reach the pinnacles of deep play, we become fully available to the world and ourselves, out of context, beyond comparison, and in harmony with life for a few glorious moments. Even when we climb down from those heights, we carry with us some valuable skills and insights. Deep play will always feel enthralling, but its details may change as basic ideas like “control,” “environment,” “self,” “body,” “god,” and countless others we now take for granted begin to evolve.

Yes, I’m sure civilizations will still evolve through play, or rather as play, since that seems to be a fundamental mechanism of our humanity. New religions will arise, new art forms, new ways to tantalize or jolt one’s senses. Artists will continue to reveal how the world touches us, how we are linked to the powerful unseen forces of nature. For deep play, people will need sacred arenas, rules, time limits, tension, exaltation, an openness to risk, and the freedom to play. Of course, their versions of deep play will explore new locales, new materials, new ways of evading the grand concourse of society for a few rapturous moments.

But suppose paradise awaits us, as so many tales foretell—freedom from disease, crime, early death. In a transcendent world, what will become of our passion for transcendence?

(Diane Ackerman [source])

…and:

The Guest House

This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.

A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.

Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they’re a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still, treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.

The dark thought, the shame, the malice,
meet them at the door laughing,
and invite them in.

Be grateful for whoever comes,
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.

(Jelaluddin Rumi [source])