Come to the Edge Life said
They said: We are afraid.
Come to the edge Life said.
They came. It pushed them…
And they flew.
Guillaume Apollinaire, 1871
As we go into 2010, I feel optimistic and quite joyful. I chose two quotes that really mean something to me, the Apollinaire one above and the Krishnamurti one at the end. I have had so much fun in my life by taking risks and constantly moving on into new experiences. I seem to have slowed down a bit on this as I’ve got older but I do keep asking myself if I’m still flying into life, what am I avoiding, am I holding on to the familiar the known or am I ready to step out into the next adventure. I think I am. I’m not sure what it will be but I’m ready for it and I know that if I’m open for it life will bring it. And as Apollinaire points out if I do hesitate life will definitely push me. And I’ll fly!
The second quote, from Krishnamurti, seems to me to represent sanity. It very simply acknowledges the inherent violence and separation which comes with identifying with a country, an ideology, a religion – the separation and distance that these create between oneself and ones fellow human beings. Didn’t Shakespeare put it well when Shylock said:
“Hath not a Jew eyes? Hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions; fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases heal’d by the same means, warm’d and cool’d by the same winter and summer, as a Christian is? If you prick us, do we not bleed? If you tickle us, do we not laugh? If you poison us, do we not die?”
Hath not a Jew, a Moslem, a Catholic, American, Japanese, a Tory, a Communist – and so on and on across this beautiful planet.
No separation – we are all the same…….
Have a very happy, joyous and alive new year.
With enormous love,
Clare…
When you call yourself an Indian or a
Muslim or a Christian or a European, or
anything else, you are being violent.
Do you see why it is violent? It is
because you are separating yourself
from the rest of mankind. When you
separate yourself by belief, by
nationality, by tradition, it breeds violence.
So a man who is seeking to understand violence does not belong
to any country, to any religion, to any political party or partial system;
he is concerned with the total understanding of mankind.
J. Krishnamurti