We reside in a tradition that has warped power from the measure of our inside tenacity into the magnitude of our forceful self-assertion. We additionally reside in a tradition that has warped sensitivity from the measure of our porousness to life — the openhearted porousness from which all inventive work springs — into a method of manipulation, extorting sympathy and slack, unconcerned with creation.
A century in the past, D.H. Lawrence (September 11, 1885–March 2, 1930) calibrated this lack of perspective in a beautiful apart tucked into his writings concerning the historical burial practices in several components of Italy, posthumously revealed within the splendid assortment of journey writings Sketches of Etruscan Places and Other Italian Essays (public library).
Contemplating the drama of life and demise, and what it takes for all times to persevere in opposition to the entropy that haunts it from the outset, he writes:
It’s all a query of sensitiveness. Brute pressure and overbearing might make a terrific impact. However ultimately, that which lives lives by delicate sensitiveness. If it have been a query of brute pressure, not a single human child would survive for a fortnight. It’s the grass of the sector, most frail of all issues, that helps all life on a regular basis. However for the inexperienced grass, no empire would rise, no man would eat bread: for grain is grass; and Hercules or Napoleon or Henry Ford would alike be denied existence.
Lawrence observes how this quiet tenacity of nature, which is the other of violence, is mirrored in our best religious leaders and our highest achievements of civilization. In a passage nothing lower than countercultural amid our current tradition, during which the loudest and brashest is mistaken for the strongest, he provides:
Brute pressure crushes many vegetation. But the vegetation rise once more. The Pyramids is not going to final a second in contrast with the daisy. And earlier than Buddha or Jesus spoke the nightingale sang, and lengthy after the phrases of Jesus and Buddha are gone into oblivion the nightingale nonetheless will sing. As a result of it’s neither preaching nor instructing nor commanding nor urging. It’s simply singing. And at first was not a Phrase, however a chirrup.
Complement with Gwendolyn Brooks on vulnerability as power and Bruce Lee on yielding as an act of strength, then revisit D.H. Lawrence on the antidote to the malady of materialism and trees, solitude, and how we root ourselves when relationships collapse.
