Tag: delight

delight // pain

Pam and BrennaLeave a comment

Delight becomes pictorial
When viewed through pain,—
More fair, because impossible
That any gain.

The mountain at a given distance
In amber lies;
Approached, the amber flits a little,—
And that ’s the skies!

~Emily Dickinson
Image via Pexels.com.

I don’t know how much I have to add to this. It’s so true! When we’re suffering, all the good times appear “pictorial.” All the possible connotations fit. Something that is pictorial is not only lovely, but also unreal–a picture, after all, is not the real thing. In times of pain, delight seems not only lovely, but impossibly so.

The second stanza elaborates. When we’re at a certain distance from happiness, mired in the morass of our own misery, that happiness is tinged with different colors–colors that the real thing doesn’t possess. This poem is a tightly-constructed and well-thought-out mini-meditation on the nature of suffering and what it does to our experience of happiness.

Delight or pain?

Pam and BrennaLeave a comment

CXII
Are friends delight or pain?
Could bounty but remain
Riches were good.


But if they only stay
Bolder to fly away,
Riches are sad.

~Emily Dickinson

Today, thank your delightful friends. Give thanks for the ones who will listen to you complain about having to do homework, who will talk you down when you’re freaking out about work, who appreciate you when it seems no one else does, who send you unexpected care packages and make you tea and make time for you. Thank the ones who are always there to remind you that you’re not a terrible human being, the ones who make you laugh until you cry. The ones who are honest. The ones who are real.

As for the other ones, well–let them fly away. If you have one true friend, you have riches indeed.