This feels relevant for me: our beloved kitty Oscar is approaching the end of his life. The reason Megan’s family has a cat today is because Oscar visited with her and her husband Paul many years ago and, with his relevant charming and chill nature, convinced skeptical Paul that cats could be incredibly wonderful.
As I’m writing this-feels-relevant-for-me blog post, Oscar is crying over his water bowl and I’m crying with anticipatory grief.
Since I was taken to a hospital room three days ago and attached to I.V. antibiotics and oxygen, it makes sense that I might ask somebody to
Take me to the world!
My laptop computer, which I took with me to the Emergency Room on Sunday, takes me to the world. This is the song that was playing right before I started creating this post, which took me to the world.
Here are lyrics from Stephen Sondheim’s “Take Me to the World” that I’d like to take to the world:
Let me see the world with clouds
Take me to the world
Out where I can push through crowds
Take me to the world
A world that smiles
With streets instead of aisles
Where I can walk for miles with you
Take me to the world that’s real
Show me how it’s done
Teach me how to laugh, to feel
Move me to the sun
Just hold my hand whenever we arrive
Take me to the world where I can be alive
Let me see the world that smiles
Take me to the world
Somewhere I can walk for miles
Take me to the world
With all around things growing in the ground
Where birds that make a sound are birds
Let me see the world that’s real
Teach me how to laugh, to feel
We could laugh together
Move me to the sun
Just hold my hand whenever we arrive
Take me to the world where I can be alive
Do you want the world?
Why then, you shall have the world
Ask me for the world again
You shall have the world
A world of skies
That’s bursting with surprise
To open up your eyes for joy
We shall see the world come true
We shall have the world
I won’t be afraid with you
We shall have the world
You’ll hold my hand and know you’re not alone
You shall have the world to keep
Such a lovely world you’ll weep
We shall have the world forever for our own
Here are photos from my hospital room that I want to take to the world, here and now:
Any comments you’d like to take to the world?
Thanks to Stephen Sondheim, Evening Primrose, Theresa McCarthey and Neil Patrick Harris, the caring staff at Tufts Medical Center, my friend Megan for the flowers, and you — of course! — for taking me to the world with your presence, today.
I remember a therapy session at work, yesterday, when we were talking about comparing your problems to other people’s problems. Somebody quoted how Victor Frankl wrote that any problem will fill the available space, like a gas.
I just looked up the exact quote, from Man’s Search for Meaning, and here it is:
To draw an analogy: a man’s suffering is similar to the behavior of a gas. If a certain quantity of gas is pumped into an empty chamber, it will fill the chamber completely and evenly, no matter how big the chamber. Thus suffering completely fills the human soul and conscious mind, no matter whether the suffering is great or little. Therefore the “size” of human suffering is absolutely relative.
I really appreciated that person filling my office with Victor Frankl’s life-filling thoughts.
That song — “I Remember” — is sung by a girl who’s been trapped, from a very young age, inside a department store.
I loved Evening Primrose when I saw it, on television, when I was a kid. What fills my mind now is how I may have related to that girl, since I filled some of my days and nights trapped — not in a department store, but in a Children’s Hospital.
Like that girl, I am filled with appreciation for all those wonderful things that fill the world.
As usual, what filled my ears, eyes, mind, and soul, yesterday — including the beautiful lyrics from “I Remember” — affected how my iPhone was filled with images and how I fill this post, today:
That “Work Zone” sign is filling that last photo so much, you might miss the first flowering tree I’ve seen in Boston, this spring.
Feel free to fill the space of a comment here with anything that’s filling you, now, about this post.
I shall now fill the space of this post with my gratitude for my patients, for Victor Frankl, for Stephen Sondheim, for Judy Butterfield, for the sky, for the trees, for everything I experienced yesterday, and for you.
