The biggest thing we distract ourselves with (in the Western world) is no longer pleasure but finding meaning. It’s much easier to get caught up in finding meaning rather than doing, feeling, perceiving.

I’m questioning what that is — meaning. What does it “mean” to have a meaningful life? What does it “mean” to create a meaningful thing? And mostly, why does everything have to “mean” something?

I think our quest for finding meaning has become religious and incessant in its pursuit in a way that no longer contributes to the genuine development of the search. It’s a default mode of being that isn’t necessarily expansive; instead, it is obsessive and relentless and inherently tied to a type of perfection. It’s odd that way, how relinquishing actually renders freedom.

There’s some phrase stirring said by someone at some point — I’ve conflated flowers blooming with sunsets but whatever. The thing is: they just do. They just happen. And if I’ve learned anything at all, it’s that “just do your best” tends to cover most if not everything.

After John died, the world became very clear—as if a window had broken—the world itself became very dear. It was the place John had lived, and as long as I still walked around I could catch glimpses of him. But more than that, when John died I felt as if I had finally entered the larger community of humans. Now I knew unbearable grief, and I was like other people in this world who had known this. I began to understand that everything I knew and loved would pass away, and I would pass away. I would die like my brother had died, and the world, the actual “is-ness” of it became and remains very precious to me‚ the wind, running water, voices. I think John already knew this. One night at the hospital, when he was in a lot of pain, I asked him how he bore it, and he said, “I take some of it from an older man, he’s my arms, and my head is a woman who’s alone.”

When I tell you this it sounds impossible, but he really did say that—it’s one of the things I wonder if I am permitted to tell, it feels so intimate. But it indicates how he transformed pain into love, so often. He was a poet. That’s what poets do.

∆ Marie Howe interviewed by Victoria Redel for BOMB

...And since my wife is here, I'll close with one story about her that I tell in the book. I talk a lot about the joys of being seen by others, but it's sometimes even a greater joy to be the one doing the seeing.

And so, about several years ago now, I was reading a book at the table in the dining room, and my wife walked in the front door, and she was standing there in the doorway. The door's open in the summertime, and the sun is coming in behind her. And I look up at her, and she doesn't notice I'm there. That's the kind of charisma I have...and a thought sweeps across my consciousness: I know her. I really know her. And if you asked me what I thought I knew of her at that moment, it was not like her personality traits or the words I would use to describe her to someone. It was like the whole of her being. It was like the ebbs and flows of her harmonies, just her incandescence and her way of looking at the world. When you really see somebody, it was almost as if I was not seeing her; I was seeing out from her and to really see somebody, you have to see a little of how they see the world. And if you ask me what word I would reuse to describe how I was looking at that moment, the only word in the English language that occurred to me was beholden. I wasn't inspecting or observing; I was just beholding her, and it was just a great moment. It was just like a great sense of connection and seeing. And I told this story that sometime later to some friends who are older, and they said, yeah, that's how we look at our grandkids, we just behold them...and it's just that beauty and the joy, and that just because the happiness of human connection, it really is possible.

∆ David Brooks interviewed by Steven Winn for City Arts & Lectures

Yesterday, I spent 60 dollars on groceries,
took the bus home,
carried both bags with two good arms back to my studio apartment
and cooked myself dinner.
You and I may have different definitions of a good day.
This week, I paid my rent and my credit card bill,
worked 60 hours between my two jobs,
only saw the sun on my cigarette breaks
and slept like a rock.
Flossed in the morning,
locked my door,
and remembered to buy eggs.
My mother is proud of me.
It is not the kind of pride she brags about at the golf course.
She doesn’t combat topics like, ”My daughter got into Yale”
with, ”Oh yeah, my daughter remembered to buy eggs”
But she is proud.
See, she remembers what came before this.
The weeks where I forgot how to use my muscles,
how I would stay as silent as a thick fog for weeks.
She thought each phone call from an unknown number was the notice of my suicide.
These were the bad days.
My life was a gift that I wanted to return.
My head was a house of leaking faucets and burnt-out lightbulbs.
Depression, is a good lover.
So attentive; has this innate way of making everything about you.
And it is easy to forget that your bedroom is not the world,
That the dark shadows your pain casts is not mood-lighting.
It is easier to stay in this abusive relationship than fix the problems it has created.
Today, I slept in until 10,
cleaned every dish I own,
fought with the bank,
took care of paperwork.
You and I might have different definitions of adulthood.
I don’t work for salary, I didn’t graduate from college,
but I don’t speak for others anymore,
and I don’t regret anything I can’t genuinely apologize for.
And my mother is proud of me.
I burned down a house of depression,
I painted over murals of greyscale,
and it was hard to rewrite my life into one I wanted to live
But today, I want to live.
I didn’t salivate over sharp knives,
or envy the boy who tossed himself off the Brooklyn bridge.
I just cleaned my bathroom,
did the laundry,
called my brother.
Told him, “it was a good day.”

Kait Rokowski, “A Good Day”