The Phrase of the Year
In 2006 I did a brief homestay in Cairo. My host family spoke English quite well, but all conversations were sprinkled with the Arabic phrase, “Inshallah”—meaning “Godwilling.” This phrase was applied to distant, big plans, and to the smaller daily plans, like when we might have tea.
It was the constant reminder that all of our plans hang on gossamer threads that can be severed in an instant.
There is so much truth to the phrase “out of sight, out of mind.” Humans have an enormous capacity to turn a blind eye. This is no doubt individually protective, if often detrimental (both individually and collectively). Different cultures have different ways of bringing awareness to the ephemerality of the human experience. Some highlight that death is coming that the world is uncertain—others try to keep these realities far enough away that they can be mostly ignored. The culture I live in in the United States is the latter—an ostrich culture.
Only 2020 was relentless in ensuring that I remove my head from the sand over and over again. The blaring messages of 2020: Death is always close at hand. You have no idea what tomorrow will bring. There are undeniable injustices taking place every single day. You are complicit in these, whether you want to be or not.
And as hardwired as I am by the cultural waters I’ve swum in forever to plunge my head back into the sand—2020 has done some rewiring.
While it is undoubtedly inappropriate for me to co-opt the term Inshallah, it has nevertheless become an unspoken hum in my head. “I’ll see you for a walk tomorrow” (Inshallah). “I’ll be teaching on Tuesdays this semester” (Inshallah). When we can travel again, we’ll go…” (Inshallah). And on and on.
Because there is something that feels both hefty and light in this phrase. The heft: Perhaps I won’t go on that walk tomorrow because I’ll be dead by then. The light: that this is common—this is a fate we all share—this is what it is to be human, with a dose of gallows humor—which is a tonic in the dark times. And there is real humility in this phrase. Humility that none of us are soothsayers. None of us can say with irrefutable certainty that THIS is how it will be. A truth highlighted by events of this week. Poetry, as is often the case, says it best—
…
David Whyte’s “The House of Belonging”
I awoke
this morning
in the gold light
turning this way
and that
thinking for
a moment
it was one
day
like any other.
But
the veil had gone
from my
darkened heart
and
I thought
it must have been the quiet
candlelight
that filled my room,
it must have been
the first
easy rhythm
with which I breathed
myself to sleep,
it must have been
the prayer I said
speaking to the otherness
of the night.
And
I thought
this is the good day
you could
meet your love,
this is the gray day
someone close
to you could die.
This is the day
you realize
how easily the thread
is broken
between this world
and the next
and I found myself
sitting up
in the quiet pathway
of light,
the tawny
close grained cedar
burning round
me like fire
and all the angels of this housely
heaven ascending
through the first
roof of light
the sun has made.
This is the bright home
in which I live,
this is where
I ask
my friends
to come,
this is where I want
to love all the things
it has taken me so long
to learn to love.
This is the temple
of my adult aloneness
and I belong
to that aloneness
as I belong to my life.
There is no house
like the house of belonging.
…
Each time I read this poem a different line grabs me and pulls me in. Today it is: “this is where I want/ to love all the things/ it has taken me so long/ to learn to love.” Because remembering that each moment we are living, we are also dying is really, at the core, about loving. Loving with more tenderness or ferocity all that we will eventually lose, which if you really pause to consider will break and fill your heart all at once.
