Our generation has often spoken of the imperative to fulfill one’s human potential. In my understanding, this potential is not limited to the thin slice of the spectrum we tend to think of as happiness. To be fully alive, we must avail ourselves of the entire range including bittersweet sorrow, righteous indignation and grief. Add but these few shadows, and there is suddenly some texture, some depth some softening to the truth to our lives.
But then again, these are not the entire spectrum. What of vindictiveness, cunning, complacency, rage and violence perpetrated against ourselves and others? What of our collusion—our tacit acceptance of that which we know to be wrong?
When I was younger, I could more easily distract myself from aspects of humanity I was unwilling to grant attention. Now, with unassigned time on my hands, I am less protected from knowledge of the cruelties that people inflict upon one another, less able to hide from my own shadows, less likely to speak about the fulfillment of the human potential as if doing so were readily achievable.
Now that I am old, I discover I have a new capacity—one that I would never have thought myself willing to embrace. To deplore. Deplore is the right word—a much better word than recoil. Deplore dives through hardened crusts of avoidance and complacency, busting through to the very heart of things. Deplore opens up jagged cracks and gaping holes. Pain gets through, somehow feeling very much like love. And like love, you know you have truly reached the limit of your own human potential when you can bear no more.
Excerpt from Carol Orsborn’s Older, Wiser, Fiercer: The Wisdom Collection
