Possibility has neither intention nor direction.

Direction and intention are words applied to our allowances and uses – but not to possibility. They are the shape we give to the forms within which we live and create together: the shaping of possibility through what we together allow and disallow. Good and evil are not intrinsic to possibility but are the inseparable partners in the tango of our wills and allowances. Exhilarating, enticing, creating … and laced with violation and risk.

Possibility does not bear the weight of fate. Fate is the wall we construct against our terror of its Janus face; a wall built with the bricks of our everyday foregone conclusions.

Listen carefully to the conversations we have with each other and within ourselves. Attend to the deeply rooted tenacity with which we cling to the Fate we rail against. Listen to the continuous recycling of inevitability. Listen also to the dreams of what might be … if only.

We work diligently to keep the awesome terror and wonder of possibility in separate rooms within our awareness. We split them and surrender, complaining all the way, about our fate.

Yet true vitality and freedom lie only in our sober embrace of their ironic and contradictory bond. Our very form is sustainable only as we acknowledge this inseparable couple residing in the core of our physical self – not as two separate forces, but as one unfathomable reality.

We approach this realization only in moments, often in shared moments of sadness, pain or disappointment – if we allow them. These are moments, large and small, when the forgone conclusions used to bind us to each other and the world are challenged and surrendered – when our common realization of the irony of our existence can support the release of both our tears and our laughter.

Possibility provides no cure – only release through the constant retelling and undoing of the stories we create and tell each other. In this retelling, we allow the intrusion of the strange within and without; the uncanny always knocking on our door.

***

Insofar as any “mastering” of the past is possible,

it consists in relating what has happened;

but such narration,

which shapes history,

solves no problem and assuages no suffering;

it does not master anything

once and for all.

Rather, as long as the meaning of the events remains alive

– and this meaning can persist for very long periods of time –

“mastering of the past”

can take the form of ever-recurrent narration.

The poet and the historian

have the task of setting this process of narration in motion

and of involving us in it.

And we

who for the most part are neither poets nor historians

are familiar with the nature of this process

from our own experience with life,

for we too

have the need to recall

the significant events in our own lives

by relating them

to ourselves and others.

Thus we are constantly preparing the way

for “poetry”

as a human potentiality;

we are, constantly

expecting it

to erupt in some human being.

Even non tragic plots become genuine events

only when they are experienced

a second time

in the form of suffering by memory.

Such memory can speak only when indignation and just anger

have been silenced – and this needs time.

We can no more master the past

than we can undo it.

But we can reconcile ourselves to it.

After Hannah Arendt

Men in Dark Times

©  2016 James Donnelly, DSW.LCSW

All rights reserved

South Garden Press, New York

For thoughts and comments, please e mail to: jdonnellydsw@gmail.com