Small Details

Days go by, and I hesitate to write in my blog because I don't know if it will please my audience. I so much crave attention from others, as if, like the falling tree in the forest, I would cease to exist if no one heard me. And yet, I know my audience is few - dear friends, yes, but not the world-wide acclaim my ego would hope for to assure me that I am loved.

Today I sit outside with nothing between me and the air, reading the journals of Etty Hillesum, and from her frankness, I am again inspired to write. She details her life as if it matters - as if her feelings about a tree being cut down matter. My tendency is to look for "important" things in my life to share - great insights, clever sayings, dramatic events, as if the rest of my life is not really worth it. Yet the smaller things are important to me, or I would not go through them. I would not have driven to the store to buy eggs for breakfast if it had not mattered - I could just as easily have had cereal. But I took the trouble to dress, go out, go through traffic, go through the cold store, and come back maybe 40 minutes later, just so I could have three fried eggs.

Etty's journals show such intimate delight in her life that I can see that it is the small details that make life worth living - it is noticing and loving the movement of the sun, first as it beat down warmly on my skin, making me sweat, then as it moved behind the house, bringing a refreshing chill on the breeze. This is living, this is what life is about perhaps. We fight wars and diseases and amazing hardships just so we can sit in our backyard and feel the sun and breeze once again on or skin. Is this not the purpose of it all?

Today I am at home, alone, relishing my aloneness. I had planned to be in Oregon today, and I cancelled the trip at the last moment and at significant expense, because something inside me was in agony, struggling to be heard. Too often I ignore what appears to be trivial to me - this time I listened. And in the stillness I see more clearly that I need to speak and live my truth, and how I need to pick my words, not for imagined effect on my popularity, but because it is what I need to say.

Comment posted by Gene
at 7/9/2006 5:32:00 PM
Why, I'm delighted, Sapphire - you're the first new voice on my blog. Thank you for speaking up. Hope more posts speak to you also.

This lesson continues to challenge me - my distain for triviality runs deep, and I need to reach even deeper to find reality. After all, what will be left after we have destroyed the earth and there is no one left to even remember our passing? Nothing - no cures for AIDS, no great philosophies, no technological breakthroughs - nothing except our experience - the fact that one day, a glorious creature basked in glorious sunshine, and was fully aware of the glory of that moment. Perhaps that one day, that one experience, is enough to justify the long journey the universe has travelled to produce such a miracle. Is it possible?

Comment posted by Sapphire
at 7/9/2006 5:15:00 PM
I happened to find your blog on the main page of Blogger and read this post. It is so elloquent. I think many of us fall into that same rut of perhaps starting a blog for ourselves, but then when people visit, our ego swells and then it changes to blogging to keep people coming back for more. We lose sight of the fact that we started the blog for ourselves, not for the masses.

Comment posted by Anonymous
at 7/8/2006 8:34:00 PM
I'm glad you said that, Heidi, about loving life and all its little pleasures. It's good to hear from you also. Andy

Comment posted by Heidi
at 7/8/2006 7:27:00 PM
I imagine a professional counselor would have wanted those 3 eggs for breakfast also *grins* It is refreshing for me to hear someone expound on the melacholy of the inner mind only to be calmed by the beauty of the most trivial mysteries of nature in their own back yard. I'm glad others find peace in simplicity - and yes, maybe that's really the purpose of life - just being alive and loving life, I think. God doesn't need us to be important for Him - he's already done it all for us. But I guess sometimes we simply need to feel and express it and that makes it all important to us.

Comment posted by Anonymous
at 7/8/2006 8:01:00 AM
Hey, I hear you, Gene, whether you're a falling tree or whatever! Keep letting us know your thoughts and where you're at, and call us together to meet at your home whenever you feel like it, or be alone when you feel like it. (Being alone in a crowd, like at a folk festival, is what I often do; it's better than being really alone at home, although at home at least I can watch cable TV.) We need more people in this world who like attention and add something to other people's lives. It sounds like you're going through some heavy stuff right now that you don't want to keep to yourself, so maybe you would benefit from some professional counseling. Anyway, it's good to tell us what's on your mind. Andy