Home » More Frostian thoughts: on being alive in difficult times

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More Frostian thoughts: on being alive in difficult times — 14 Comments

  1. Finials.

    Expect the best, prepare for the worst. Though, given that, in my view, heaven is at the end of either, I don’t… sweat things too much. Still, I do prep.

    As for pessimism? Optimism? Both are a fools errands for which I don’t have the time. Hey, hand me that case of bullets… no, the beans, I think, actually. Yeah. Thanks. I’ll just keep a pulse on what I am doing and if any… obstructions are looming or actively at work, deal with or avoid those as I may.

    Still, when it is your government which believes it has you surrounded, and is actively seeking to subdue you, it is dark. If America falls, that is it. Just facts.

  2. Very moving and inspirational post. Especially now, when Putin launched a war of aggression against Ukraine which will turn a nightmare for all parties involved.

  3. Regarding “difficult times”:

    The following paragraph appears in a response to “Beverly” in your Obamacare job-quitting thread. It seems appropriate to re-post it here:

    (Tangentially) this is a small revelation of one of the blessings that Western civilization and Western economies have provided; a heretofore unimaginable access to an absolute surfeit of goods across all economic levels which make our lives easier. . .

    The point being that we see turbulent times as difficult, and while they might be, in the past such turbulence was really about continuing to be alive. Put in that perspective, our difficulties here in the U.S. are mostly a mote of dust in the eye of the universe.

    Now the Ukrainians et. al. would disagree and they would have a right to. Their difficult times have once again been reduced to whether they will be enslaved or even alive tomorrow.

  4. Of course this world is the highest. Something as simple as death transcends it.

    The Left can rule over a billion slaves, but they cannot stop the equality of Left from taking them.

  5. Neo,

    Excellent essay.

    There’s a small typo (I think). Didn’t you mean to write “Is Life Worth Living” as the title for James’s essay?

    By the way, a superb book related to your themes here is Thomas Howard’s “Chance or the Dance.” I can’t remember how I learned of it — might have been here!

    Jamie Irons

  6. “Life Is Worth Living” was the title of Bishop Fulton J. Sheen’s very popular TV show in the 1950s. Wonder if Frost was a fan?

  7. The percentage of humanity held in bondage to, in whatever form, tyrannies that deny the individual’s “unalienable right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” would I think, be an excellent barometer of the particular degree to which an age qualifies as ‘the worst of times”.

    Focusing upon the water in the glass, rather than to the proportion of water the glass may hold… is the way to fully appreciate what joy is available from moment to moment.

    This reminds me of an old zen tale that I’ve always liked; a monk is chased by a tiger to a cliff’s edge and is only moments away from being seized by the tiger. A vine leads over the edge and grabbing it, the monk lowers himself down the vine. Safely below the cliff’s edge, he breathes a sigh of relief and then notices to his side a perfect strawberry on a bush. Only to then feel the vine starting to quickly part from the cliff. Knowing that he is but moments away from falling to his death, he reaches out, plucks the strawberry and pops it into his mouth…savoring to the full the bliss of flavor that explodes in his mouth.

    The point of course, isn’t to deny that circumstances may not be dire but to fully enjoy from moment to moment, all that life offers.

  8. Presumptive claims of the ‘worst of times’ for any particular generation/epoch may be driven by personality, depression, narcissism, or whatever, but that’s not to say Jeremiahs are always hyperbolic and always wrong. Then too, when the boy repeatedly cried out dire straits (WOLF!) he was eventually right.

  9. Geoffrey Britain,

    Focusing upon the water in the glass, rather than to the proportion of water the glass may hold… is the way to fully appreciate what joy is available from moment to moment.

    Yes. The question always asked is half empty or half full, but there is another alternative. Perhaps the glass is just the wrong size.

    I read a report about a teacher (I think it was a commenter on this site) who gave out Starburst candies and with a few left over, indiscriminately gave them to various students. He was amazed at how the kids did not revel in the fact that they now had three Starbursts which they didn’t have before, but rather were envious of those few children who got four instead of three.

    Half empty? Half Full? Or the wrong sized glass?

  10. Nothing to add to the commentary except to thank you for recommending the Burnshaw biography – it’s a good read so far. I was “sidetracked” a bit by Lathem’s edition of Frost’s complete collection of poetry.

  11. G. Joubert, that’s a mighty fine way of looking at it: Cain slew Abel because he was jealous of Abel’s knowledge and conduct. So ever has the inner man made war against hedonism and the nations against law.

    Frost was extraordinary in that his intellect found that the extraordinary challenge against faith in his time, which was much much greater than in ours, met such an internal and intellectual resistance. Against an onslaught of Darwinism, Freudianism and Marxism, he was, I suspect, unimpressed. His superior mind, which knew language, a gift given by God to man, protected him from the “science” of his age, a science we all now know to be incredibly simplistic and prejudiced.

    No wonder that depression bothered him, alone against the academic constellation he maintained what the Word suggests and cannot be proved.

    It is hard to read his words and not feel the Word.

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