The poetry of it
“It seems strange to say it. But when things have been going well there has seemed a kind of poetry in life. Yes, I think ‘poetry’ is the right word. There has been something beyond the level of bed and breakfast, and getting the kids off to school. There has been something about it all that I felt within myself. A quiet knowing, an understanding, between my husband and I, and joy. And now it has all gone. The joy has gone, and the understanding has gone, and our marriage is on the way to going too.
‘Everything has changed. No, it has not all changed. Only one tiny bit of it; it’s me; and I know it.
‘What is the change? Simply that I am on edge. On edge, and the joy has slipped down the other side, along with the understanding I felt I had of things. And my husband and I are slipping apart, too.
‘Our quality of life, the things that are worthwhile, have all gone. And now a nothingness comes to my life; a nothingness in that which was so full.”
It is just that the nervous tension of stress inhibits what we might call the ‘poetry of life’.
Stress and love
“Oh, how I have loved! It has fulfilled my life, fulfilled my being. And it flowed on. It overflowed into the world around me; to the animate and the inanimate; to the heavens above me, and the earth which provides.
‘Now, something of it has gone from me. The joy, and the blessedness that I felt in the one whom I love, has gone from me. It’s running out of everything around me; it’s gone.
‘There’s loss in death; but this is more, it’s loss of life, life as it could be, and has been.
‘What caused this loss? Not him. Not me. Perhaps it was me? Perhaps it was my reaction to the problem? But how can I love when I feel so stressed?”
Quality of life varies from individual to individual. Not all of us will attain that degree of quality which is indicated in the example. However, what degree we do attain, whether great or small, is easily eroded by the tension arising from stress.
Suspicion and jealousy
“As a child I pulled the blanket over my head as a protection against the fears of the night. I feared the devils of the dark might set upon me.
‘Childhood fantasies are left behind with the years, but now I am beset by a new generation of devils – more vicious than those of the past – Suspicion and his son, the little devil called Jealousy. Suspicion and Jealousy. Mean qualities of little people. I can see that I have them both.”
Who are the suspicious and jealous? They are the insecure. The effect of stress, and the disordered action of nerve cells, is to make us uncertain of ourselves. Insecurity is the ground in which suspicion and jealousy grows.
*84/98/5*
