Tag: child abuse

Lightly Child, Lightly.

Live & Learn30 Comments

Tippett: And then you talk about growing up in a sad, depressed place, a difficult place. You don’t belabor this, I mean, and in other places — there’s a place you talk about you were one of many thousands who’ve had insufficient childhoods, but that you spent a lot of your time walking around the woods in Ohio.

Oliver: Yes, I did, and I think it saved my life. To this day, I don’t care for the enclosure of buildings. It was a very bad childhood — for everybody, every member of the household, not just myself, I think — and I escaped it, barely, with years of trouble. But I did find the entire world, in looking for something. But I got saved by poetry, and I got saved by the beauty of the world.

— Mary Oliver, from “I Got Saved by the Beauty of the World” in “On Being Interview with Krista Tippett” (Feb 15 2015)

Notes:

  1. Post Title & Inspiration: Aldous Huxley: “It’s dark because you are trying too hard. Lightly child, lightly. Learn to do everything lightly. Yes, feel lightly even though you’re feeling deeply. Just lightly let things happen and lightly cope with them.
  2. Poem Source. Thank you Make Believe Boutique.

Small miseries

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Rudyard Kipling, Illustration

A post by Amanda Patterson on Rudyard Kipling triggered a stream of thoughts this morning.  Kipling was born yesterday in 1865.  I couldn’t recall ever reading anything by Kipling but I’ve certainly heard of him.  (DK. Mr. Contemporary. Always looking forward.  Never much for history.  Not much for looking back. What possibly could I learn from a life 100+ years ago? PAST IS PAST.)

Kipling, “born in India, was sent to England to live with a foster family and receive a formal British education at the age of 6.  These were hard years for Kipling.  His Foster mother was a brutal woman, who quickly grew to despise her young foster son. She beat and bullied Kipling, who also struggled to fit in at school. Kipling’s solace came in books and stories. With few friends, he devoted himself to reading. By the age of 11, Kipling was on the verge of a nervous breakdown. A visitor to his home saw his condition and immediately contacted his mother, who rushed back to England and rescued her son from the Holloways.”

Yet, here’s a man who survived this childhood and flourished.  He said:

Small miseries, like small debts, hit us in so many places, and meet us at so many turns and corners, that what they want in weight, they make up in number, and render it less hazardous to stand the fire of one cannon ball, than a volley composed of such a shower of bullets.

And said:

I always prefer to believe the best of everybody, it saves so much trouble.

And said:

This is a brief life, but in its brevity it offers us some splendid moments, some meaningful adventures.

And a man, who produced this poem in 1895:

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