We were on the beach at Ko Olina. I was standing by our chairs, letting the sun dry me, looking across the crescent of sand at nothing in particular. I saw possibilities.
The protected nature of the lagoon provides a unique place for children to play, in the water or on the beach. I saw a half dozen children from at least three distinct ethnic backgrounds, all toddlers or younger. Two were sitting on the sand with plastic shovels. Three were in the water in the arms of Mom. One was asleep on a blanket, soft rock music in her ear from a small boom box.
I thought about the moms. The love and affection they showed to their children seemed almost holy, like the finest painting of Madonna and Child come to life. I hoped that each of these kids was the fruit of intention, not accident, an explicit statement by the parents of hope and optimism about the future. I wondered what the lives of those six children would turn out to be.
We like to believe that any child can become whatever he or she has a passion to become. We know differently. Context and circumstance, economic and otherwise, are factors in all our lives and will be for these kids as well. Just now, though, on the beach at Ko Olina, in the loving care of Mom, anything seemed possible.
At home later that day, I was outside in the driveway when the FedEx truck pulled up across the street. The driver hopped out with a large package, walked quickly to the front door and rang the doorbell.
The sound of the bell cued a musical worm in my head, the song from “The Music Man” about “the Wells Fargo man.” Remember? The child singing the song is sure that the delivery man is bringing “somethin’ tspeshal, just for me.”
Most packages you and I get these days bring items we have ordered. So they hold no surprises. When a box comes that we have not expected, a frisson of excitement lights up in us. Could it be “somethin’ tspeshal?”
The philosopher, Soren Kierkegaard, wrote “Either/Or: A Fragment of Life.” In it, he said: “If I were to wish for anything, I should not wish for wealth and power but for the passionate sense of the potential, for the eye which, ever young and ardent, sees the possible. Pleasure disappoints; possibility never. And what wine is as sparkling, what so fragrant, what so intoxicating as possibility?”
People of a Certain Age, how are we all doing on that passionate sense of potential?
Nothing guarantees that possibilities will be positive. Kierkegaard’s title is so intriguing because either/or seems a condition of life; will the possibility produce something good or not?
Is that a matter of luck or fate? Whenever we make decisions, are we not engaging in weighing benefits and risks, positives and negatives? Haven’t we all been disappointed when the possibility of a positive is unrealized?
Doesn’t our attitude about possibilities depend upon our natures? Watching the movie Christopher Robin recently, I was reminded that A.A. Milne provided lovable and comical characters to depict either/or. Winnie the Pooh, bear of “very little brain,” sees only positives. What can go wrong floating near a beehive holding on to a balloon determined to collect a little bit of honey? Eeyore, the donkey, can see only negatives.
Milne gave us other archetypes, too, like the ever-anxious Piglet and the oh-so-not-so wise Owl. How many children have selected Pooh or one of his friends as their favorite in the Hundred Acre Wood? How much are you and I surrounded by Poohs and Eeyores, Piglets and Owls?
One of my favorite poems by Emily Dickinson takes its title from the first line:
“I dwell in Possibilities—
A fairer House than Prose—
More numerous of windows—
Superior—for Doors—
Of Chambers as the Cedars—
Impregnable of eye—
And for an everlasting Roof—
The Gambrels of the Sky—
Of visitors—the fairest—
For occupation—
The spreading wide my narrow Hand
To gather Paradise—“
Scholars see the poem as proclaiming the power of poetry to lift her from the confines of the house she seldom left. I see the movement in the poem from dwelling in possibilities to Paradise.
Ralph Waldo Emerson once quipped, “What is a weed? A plant whose virtues have not been discovered!” I wonder if he gardened much or did he leave that to Mrs. Emerson while he wrote his essay on Self-Reliance? (Not my original line.) But he did make the point that some potential is hard to spot.
Our house faces east and south, and we have a nice view. We can watch the sun rise. Most days, nature seems to be inviting me to see possibilities, the sparkling potential announced by the dawn. I wonder if that gift of grace I receive each day was nurtured many years ago on the beaches of Long Island where I was the toddler with a plastic shovel in my hand?
Possibly.
Daniel E. White
May 11, 2019