What we are Desperate, and in the Dark...

January 7, 2005

...is the test for which we are prepared daily.

Tell All I see Them on the other side.
I love you.

Update: Don't miss Jeff's comment below,"there is a man who loves his family."

As the magnificent Byron Katie is wont to say, when people are re-visiting the hell of their lives with an alcoholic parent: "Did he get up and go to work some days? That can be very, very hard for some people."

Thank you. Everyone. For doing what's sometimes hard and frightening. Out of love.

Comments

[Jeff Hull]

Let me share a little personal observation of some peripheral relevance.

The I practice in an office building attached to the hospital. A new hospital office tower was built next to mine, and I had the proverbial bird's eye of the entire construction cycle. Of great interest was the drilling of the many pilings which became the foundation. These were forty foot deep holes, about 30 inches in diameter, later to be filled with steel rebar and concrete.

A giant auger drilled the clay soil, lifting and dumping over and over. After the initial drilling, a steel casing was lowered to shore up the sides of the hole. When the hole was at the prescribed depth of about 40 feet, the auger was removed, and a small portable hand-operated crane was placed over the hole. A black man sat on a piece of lumber that functioned as a makeshift seat, and with a small shovel and bucket was lowered to the bottom of the shaft. What he did down there I do not know; I suppose the bottom surface of the hole, and hence the concrete piling, must be level for maximum strength. Often, the other workers lowered a miniature jack-hammer to the bottom of the hole, and an incredibly loud rat-tat-tat-tat was heard even through my double-paned window. I could not believe he was doing this, and incidentally did not notice any ear protection. Then they would haul him up, and drill the next hole.

I told my office staff, "There is a man who loves his family."

Those of us who work with clean hands in air-conditioned offices, who never lift anything heavier than a phone receiver, and whose most dreaded calamity on the job might be getting stuck in an elevator, forget or just never considered that the building in which we work was built by such men, who climb down into dark holes, or walk across narrow steel beams without fear or safety harness, or go a mile down into the caves of coal so that we can leave the hall light on and not worry about the trivial cost.

Man is a magnificent creature. Often his most magnificent and inspiring acts are done by the most unassuming of his race, and shame on us when we forget that fact. Ecce homo.