[Poetry] may make us from time to time a little more aware of the deeper, unnamed feelings which form the substratum of our being, to which we rarely penetrate; for our lives are mostly a constant evasion of ourselves.

 

-    T.S. Elliot

 

Now it's over I'm dead and I haven't done anything that I want (now it's over) Or, I'm still alive and there's nothing I want to do

 

-- They Might be Giants

 

Born into the latter days of a falling Empire[1], we stare out into the sunlight and wonder what is to be done, not for the world or our loved ones, though we comtemplate those things as well.  But we wonder what is to be done with us.  Caught between Scylla and Charybdis, we wonder exactly how we are to make our psyche work for us.  Like the time I was handed that gift and I didn’t know what it was for or perhaps being given a sweater two sizes too big and hearing some benign relative say, “Oh you’ll grow into it.  You’ll see.”  This is the story of our psyche.  Some of us pack it away in boxes condemned to sit upon some lonely shelf.  Some of us fiddle with it too early and don’t understand the meaning as we gaze at it hoping that the instructions will come to us.  Who knows what is to be done with a psyche?

 

Our work fulfills and frightens us.  We believe ourselves up to no task, but upon taking it and with a healthy dose of encouragement we move through.  But where is the psyche in all this?  Where is the gift of long ago, given to us by the cosmos or God or something else?

 

The psyche is that which must be what it is and always has been; an enigma unlocked by faith and hope and all the pithy platitudes of our elders.  We are born to be happy and never satisfied.  At the back the darkness beckons us and we shut it out.  The question is are we living in the house of chaos with the God standing outside or are we in the house  of God with the chaos at our door?  I do not know.  It is not for us to know perhaps, and that is what drives us … somewhere.

 

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[1] As to which direction this empire might turn is anybody’s guess and at the singularity of that point both terrifying and exhilarating.