What is the point? I’m not the only sixty- something who asks that question. All those elections, all those crises, all that drama, all those people in my life, all those sleepless nights and all those years…what do they add up to? What are we supposed to do about them? We rush around to finish this project, shop for that item, prepare for this celebration. We dole out comfort and wisdom, advice and nonsense in equal measure. We whisper, we sing, we cry and we yell. We don’t know each other. We don’t know ourselves. And then we die.

The answer I find strangely comforting is that there is no real answer and no real point. The answer is that we like the feel of new socks, the smell of rain in the wind and the taste of refrigerated Hershey’s Kisses. We are happy and then we are sad.

It Was Like This: You Were Happy

It was like this:
you were happy, then you were sad,
then happy again, then not.
It went on.
You were innocent or you were guilty.
Actions were taken, or not.
At times you spoke, at other times you were silent.
Mostly, it seem you were silent – what could you say?
Now it is almost over.
Like a lover, your life bends down and kisses your life.
It does this not in forgiveness –
between you , there is nothing to forgive –
but with the simple nod of a baker at the moment
he sees the bread is finished with transformation.
Eating, too, is a thing now only for others.
It doesn’t matter what they will make of you
or your days: they will be wrong,
they will miss the wrong woman, miss the wrong man,
all the stories they tell will be tales of their own invention.
Your story was this: you were happy, then you were sad,
you slept, you awakened.
Sometimes you ate roasted chestnuts, sometimes persimmons.

-Jane Hirschfield

Categories: observations