Dwelling In Possibility
We called Issue 14 Possible Worlds and it became a collection on what hope could create. The voices were varied - from incredible photographers, illustrators, musicians and writers to the birds in our alley -everyone had something to say about seeing what was possible.
Contributing Editor Deegy continues the conversation. He lives in Vancouver, working at a crisis shelter for youth. He is a lover of community, music and art and can't kick the habit of cooking all things Jamie Oliver.
Dwelling In Possibility
I dwell in Possibility -
A fairer House than Prose -
More numerous of Windows -
Superior - for Doors -Of Chambers as the Cedars -
Impregnable of Eye -
And for an Everlasting Roof -
The Gambrels of the Sky -Of Visitors - the fairest -
For Occupation - This -
The spreading wide my narrow Hands
To gather Paradise -Emily Dickinson, American poet (1830-1886)
I escaped to a greasy spoon diner after work yesterday, had some eggs, sausage and toast, and finally cracked open the book, The Impossible Will Take A Little While, this time to forge past the introduction. Diane Ackerman's essay A Slender Thread, around a call she fielded at a suicide hotline, really encouraged me. She writes:
As Emikle Sola once said, some mornings you first have to swallow your toad of disgust before you can get on with the day. We choose to live. But suicidal people have tunnel vision - no other choice seems possible. A counselor's job is to put windows and doors in that tunnel.
Her thoughts struck home, as our shelter encounters many suicidal young people every month. A few of my co-workers have even chased some clients from the door to the nearest bridge and pulled them to safety. Thankfully, like Ackerman, we do have the opportunity to punch some holes of light into these tunnels of despair, and on the odd occasion have a chance to hear that some of these youth, at some point, do move beyond their suicidal ideations with some help and counselling. Last night, one youth I had worked with months earlier, who still drops by for food and to talk from time to time, stopped by in a drunken stupor to thank me for helping him find a counsellor who he really connects with. It was a strange encounter, knowing he was still dealing with much pain but was a little farther along since he first came to us, when he was so eager to jump off the nearest bridge.
Another youth I listened to in the early hours of the day, before he skipped off to work, explained what he has been learning from the book 7 Habits of Highly Effective People (Chapter 1: Being Proactive). He's a former gang member and drug dealer who struggles with mental health issues, and who has been really searching for truth ever since I first met him. He's teaching me much through his curiosity and explanations. He's been reading a lot of self-help books, everything from James Redfield's The Celestine Prophesy, to psychology books, to Og Mandino's The Greatest Salesman. This morning he was describing what being proactive meant to him, and he spoke of a way of being unencumbered by negative outside influences. He went on to talk about a Jewish psychologist, who turned out to be Viktor Frankl. It reminded me of these words I read a long time ago:
We who lived, in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms — to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way.
And there were always choices to make. Every day, every hour, offered the opportunity to make a decision, a decision which determined whether you would or would not submit to those powers which threatened to rob you of your very self, your inner freedom; which determined whether or not you would become the plaything of circumstance, renouncing freedom and dignity to become molded into the form of the typical inmate.
It was good to be reminded of such things by a youth who has overcome much and embodies Frankl's words in many different ways. I've always wondered what makes everyone wake up each morning to face their daily struggles. I guess it has to do with this deep well of choice we have and the everyday opportunity we have, as Dickenson writes, to dwell in possiblity.
- by Deegy
