So Torrie tells me I need to read the writings of Kahlil Gibran. She left a book of his stuff in my room the other night. I started leafing through and reading from THE BROKEN WINGS. It opens with a chapter telling about how, for many, memories of childhood are precious and happy…but, for the speaker, how they carry pain and dark in the proportion. Then he explains why – and this particular section caught my interest and my eye:

“It is said that unsophistication makes a man empty and that emptiness makes him carefree. It may be true among those who were born dead and who exist like frozen corpses; but the sensitive boy who feels much and knows little is the most unfortunate creature under the sun, because he is torn by two forces. The first force elevates him and shows him the beauty of existence through a cloud of dreams; the second ties him down to the earth and fills his eyes with dust and overpowers him with fears and darkness.

Solitude has soft, silky hands, but with strong fingers it grasps the heart and makes it ache with sorrow. Solitude is the ally of sorrow as well as a companion of spiritual exaltation.

The boy’s soul undergoing the buffeting of sorrow is like a white lily just unfolding. It trembles before the breeze and opens its heart to daybreak and folds its leaves back when the shadow of night comes. If that boy does not have diversion or friends or companions in his games, his life will be like a narrow prison in which he sees nothing but spider webs and hears nothing but crawling insects.”

Wow. Thanks for the recommendation Torrie. This is good stuff. And now, getting ready for bed, I can recall the spider webs and crawling insects of my youth. But now I have diversions…and I certainly have friends.