photo by Josh Scholten

If your everyday life seems poor to you, do not accuse it; accuse yourself, tell yourself you are not poet enough to summon up its riches; since for the creator there is no poverty and no poor or unimportant place.
― Rainer Maria Rilke

As a child, I would sometimes spend long rainy afternoons languishing on the couch, complaining to my mother how boring life was.  Her typical response was to remind me my boredom said more about me than about life– I became the accused, rather than the accuser,  failing to summon up life’s riches.  Thus convicted, my sentence followed:  she would promptly give me chores to do.   I learned not to voice my complaints about life because it always meant work.

Some things haven’t changed, even fifty years later.  Whenever I am tempted to feel pitiful or bored, accusing my life of being poor or unfair, I need to remember what that says about me.  If I’m not poet enough to celebrate the gilded edge of the plain and simple, if I’m not poet enough to articulate beauty even in the sharp thorns of life, if I’m not poet enough to recognize the creator’s brilliance in every molecule, then it is my poverty I’m accusing, not his.

Back to work then.  There is a life to be lived and poems to be written.