It's Light Enough to Let It Go

 

I've never seen your eyes so wide
I've never seen your appetite quite this occupied
Elsewhere is your feast of love
I know...

Where long ago we agreed to keep it light
So lets be married one more night

It's light, light enough
To let it go
It's light enough to let it go

**********

Dear Kate,

虛。

Last night before bed I talked about this Chinese character.  It means frivolous.  "Self-indulgently carefree; unconcerned about or lacking any serious purpose," the dictionary says.

Living frivolously, a life of little or no weight, worth, or significance; anything wrong with that?

To a "heavy" character like me, or probably you, a life lived frivolously is all wrong.  Not able to accept the "lightness of being" and live for transient beauty, ephemeral pleasure, instead insisting on life's ultimate meaning and pursuing it, like Nietzsche, we are perfect material to be driven to insanity.

And drive everyone else crazy as well.

I am quite aware of that, that sometimes I would deliberately take myself away from a community, a tragic ideal, an "immoral society" that moral human beings must accept for it to exist at all.

But I don't want to accept that.  I don't want to accept frivolousness in myself, and can't bear seeing my own face pretending to smile on Zoom.  The most I could do is to look away.

We all need to learn to look away.  Maybe you can afford a bed in the madhouse, but try not to drive it to overcapacity.

Last night I waited for my son to come home after work, so that I could get the key from him and pick up some gas before going to bed.  When I came back, around 11, he was already on his skateboard with his friends, three dark figures swooshing downhill on our street, in and out of patches of dim street light, safety too scattered to offer this father any solace.

I've given him tiny lights to hang on his bag, clip on his body.  I was sure they were somewhere in his room.  I was sure he will never use any of them, and that not until it becomes no longer fashionable he will forever dress all dark.  So when I saw him and his friends after I parked the car and got out, I said to them, if they could hear me at all, "It's a bit dark, isn't it?" and quickly walked away, to my house door, opened it, went through it, relieved myself of any dark vision, heavy visions that have grown trite in my imagining.  The blood has been dried a thousand times over.

I walked away.  If I want to go crazy it's my choice.  But who am I to choose for anyone else?

In Jesus, the lightness of being is not only bearable, it becomes a joy that comes with true hope.  If all we want is happiness then any false promise would do.  And that seems to be what many of us are happy to settle with--until life gets heavy, looks you in your eyes that you can no longer look away.

Last night, like any other night, at least three in a week that would unveil itself in similar manner, I fell asleep almost right away but woke up every hour after that to check on my son, to see if his bedroom door was closed.  His door stays open when he's not home; to see him to safety is to have his door closed on my face.

It's a miracle that I could fall asleep before God actioned my prayer.  Peacefully too.

Yours, Alex