Feeling useless, helpless, cowardly. Why am I not out there protesting, why havent I posted a black screen on my Insta account. What good would it do other than tell people I am sickened, angry and ashamed too? I listen. Alyson Hallet talks and my souls is lifted a bit. A flicker of light. I cant speak but I listen. I love the instruction...
"Get outside, be astonished, take note" by Mary Oliver
Isn't that what we do? Every day be astonished by something. And the beautiful lonely poem, One Art, by Elizabeth Bishop
The art of losing isn't hard to master; so many things seem filled with the intent to be lost that their loss is no disaster. Lose something every day. Accept the fluster of lost door keys, the hour badly spent. The art of losing isn't hard to master. Then practice losing farther, losing faster: places, and names, and where it was you meant to travel. None of these will bring disaster. I lost my mother's watch. And look! my last, or next-to-last, of three loved houses went. The art of losing isn't hard to master. I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster, some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent. I miss them, but it wasn't a disaster. —Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture I love) I shan't have lied. It's evident the art of losing's not too hard to master though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.
I read that poem years ago in one of the books from the Staying Alive trilogy at a time of deep loss. Live those lines at the end. We loose things and we find things too. It balances out.