Eric Tian

Yesterday was a bad day. It was one of those days where one bad thing happens right after another and never ends. When the first two bad things happen you think Sure, it’s just one of those days, on the fourth or fifth you think, Come on God, this must be a joke, on the seventh or eighth you’re on the verge of breaking and by the ninth or tenth you’ve finally snapped.

After I snapped it was 7pm and I sat alone on a chair in the city. There were many people and cars about but I felt little inside. I opened my bag to read a book, hoping it would cure my depression, and two oranges fell out onto the floor. One of the oranges rolled onto the ground two metres in front of me and the other orange disappeared from sight. I slowly went to pick up the orange I could see and looked around for the other one. I looked all around me but couldn’t find it. The orange had vanished. I sat back on my chair, defeated, on the verge of tears.

Then a man came up and said, Hey man, you dropped it there, and he pointed to the road. And there it was – my orange hiding behind the curb, underneath a parked car. I said, Oh, thank you, and went to pick it up and when it was in my hands I held the orange like it was my missing child. When I turned around the man was gone.

In that moment I felt an overwhelming sense of relief. It was a very small act of kindness over a simple orange but the man’s actions had touched me. We were both strangers to each other and he probably had nice, interesting things to do on a Saturday evening yet he made the effort to help me in my moment of need. And in that simple gesture, all my day’s stresses and burdens quietly disappeared.

It is incorrect to call small acts of kindness small. Though they take minimal effort, these things that we do for each other – a smile on walking past, a Bless you on a frightful sneeze, a You first when lining up – make our interactions divine. They can be the rope that rescues one from the depths of insanity and the gates of hell.

It only takes a tiny star to illuminate a dark sky.

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“Small Kindnesses” by Danusha Laméris:

“I’ve been thinking about the way, when you walk

down a crowded aisle, people pull in their legs

to let you by. Or how strangers still say “bless you”

when someone sneezes, a leftover

from the Bubonic plague. “Don’t die,” we are saying.

And sometimes, when you spill lemons

from your grocery bag, someone else will help you

pick them up. Mostly, we don’t want to harm each other.

We want to be handed our cup of coffee hot,

and to say thank you to the person handing it. To smile

at them and for them to smile back. For the waitress

to call us honey when she sets down the bowl of clam chowder,

and for the driver in the red pick-up truck to let us pass.

We have so little of each other, now. So far

from tribe and fire. Only these brief moments of exchange.

What if they are the true dwelling of the holy, these

fleeting temples we make together when we say, “Here,

have my seat,” “Go ahead — you first,” “I like your hat.”

“August in Waterton, Alberta” by Bill Holm

Above me, wind does its best
to blow leaves off
the aspen tree a month too soon.
No use wind. All you succeed
in doing is making music, the noise
of failure growing beautiful.

---

I found this poem in “Bird by Bird“, a part-memoir, part-guide on writing by Anne Lamont, an American novelist. The context was that one day, one of Anne’s students had received honest but harsh feedback from another writer that left him distraught and in tears. This poem is what Anne wanted to send to this upset student.

Here are two takeaways from this poem.

1. Harsh wind is inevitable

Above me, wind does its best / to blow leaves off / the aspen tree a month too soon.

It is one of the universal truths: life is suffering. We see this concept in books, many of the world religions, and most importantly, in our personal experiences. In the best of times, these hardships will seem like mere nuisances; in the worst of times, they will threaten to blow our leaves off and tear us to shreds.

In the poem, the phrase “Above me…” indicates some divine providence, or a force beyond man’s control, being the cause of this suffering, further adding onto its inevitability. “…a month too soon” also nods to the unexpected timing of suffering – that we may never predict the next tragedy around the corner.

2. Suffering is beauty

No use wind. All you succeed / in doing is making music, the noise / of failure growing beautiful.

Upon first reading, I thought this section was describing how beauty is often shaped from suffering. We all intuitively understand this – there is no muscle without breakdown, no jewel without heat, no wisdom without mistakes.

But if you read those lines carefully, this is not what it means at all. This poem is saying that suffering itself is beauty. Whether it is a quiet heartbreak, a tear streaked face or eating giant tubs of ice-cream, moments of suffering are inherently beautiful.

Why the poet takes this stance is unknown and I would love to ask him. But from my experience, there is a certain magic taking place within failure. In these moments of embarrassment and frustration, we experience more of the world in its entirety, for failure and suffering is all around us and this is beautiful.

Let us create music in the noise of failure.

I used to assume that when writers sat down to work, they all knew what they were going to write about. They must have all outlined their ideas, characters and plot twists perfectly in their minds, and all that was left was to transcribe them onto paper.

When I began writing I was terribly annoyed to find out this wasn’t the case. From my own experience, and from reading other authors’ stories, this almost never happens. We might set out to write with a general destination in mind, perhaps a scene or an idea we hope to convey, but we are most of the time half-blind, flailing around, tripping over tree branches, scrambling for a reasonable point. We can only see as far as the next sentence, the next logical thought. There is no master plan.

Thankfully, like driving at night, we can reach our destinations by seeing only as far as our headlights allow. We may make a few wrong turns, swerve suddenly to avoid roadkill and feel quite lost, but with enough time, our headlights will guide us to our destination. Going on wild tangents, creating abysmal roadkills of ideas and feeling overwhelmed are all part of the process. No one has the whole journey mapped out. Besides, it’s more interesting if you figure it out as you go.

The point is to keep moving. You can only see as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.