Thoughts from a Thinking Girl

I found an old ring a few weeks ago. OK, searched and searched and searched for the lost mate to a favorite pair of earrings that I bought a long time ago when traveling. I didn’t find the mate. Instead I found a hand-crafted artisan silver ring I had forgotten I’d had. Forgotten the way my mind forgets things – I no longer have any idea if I bought it, if it was a gift and, if so, from whom, where it was purchased, when, or any other detail except the memory of its inscription being very meaningful. The lyrical grace of the engraved lettering, in a flowing foreign language, the uneven width of the pounded silver, the perfect fit on my right ring finger please me now, pleased me back in the unnamed when, please me still.
 

 
I can’t read the language it was written in, so I didn’t quite remember what it said. I thought it was something like, “This, too, shall pass.” I have been wearing it ever since I found it, and multiple times a day saying to myself what I thought the ring said and meant. Feeling relief at the pure simplicity and truth of this sentiment, the thing we’re supposed to remember when dark clouds roll in. Such as they did over yesterday’s 4th of July fireworks, fog and clouds obscuring everything but crackles and booms, leaving nothing but cloudy, hazy, darkening gray fog and a solid bank of clouds that sometimes changed color but mostly remained immobile, impenetrable, dispelling every hope that the next set of fireworks would break through, or maybe the next set, or maybe just in time for the big finale, the one where so much is going off at one time you think it’s kind of silly to still get excited and yet you still do. No, the mounting disappointment made the sky just one layer more opaque, muffled every delightful arc of color and explosive joy, dense gloomy sky and gloomy mood remaining long past the last of the bold beachgoers dared to pack up blankets, lawn chairs, coolers, and a year’s worth of expectation to head back to their cars and the ubiquitous post-firework snail’s pace traffic jam.

I was visiting friends and family, and asked my cousin to read the ring for me. Also this shall pass, he said. It was meant to convey the impermanence of all things. Bad things will pass, he explained as if he were in his high school classroom rather than a teacher on summer break. Good things, too.

I was taken aback. I tend to think I only need reminders that painful times pass. But I suppose I need the reminder that peacefulness and contentment and happiness pass as well. Indeed, all will pass. My parents’ health has passed, my ability to bound up and down hills without the complaint of my knees has passed, my sense that life has one and only one trajectory has passed. My successes have passed, my accomplishments, too – they are canonized in curriculum vitae and a few diplomas on a wall, but if pressed, I could not tell you a single thing I learned in college or graduate school. All experiences have been accumulated, loves come and gone, old fears have been replaced with new ones (with the exception of being locked in a stairwell – that seems to have remained), old anxieties forgotten in the face of current stressors, the time of raising an infant and toddler gone, elementary school mothering gone, middle school will soon pass. The bounty of youth – my son’s, mine, my parent’s – has passed. And it was good.

Old age will also pass for my parents, inviting in a sadness that, according to philosophy, will pass. I will grieve and find it impossible to live in a world that doesn’t contain them, since my world began in theirs. Yet at some point the shock and impossibility of the new world order will pass. I will be the generation of elders.

This desire to write, to burrow through and under the isolation of the way my mind and emotions sometimes separate me from loved ones at the exact moment I hunger for closeness – also this will pass.

また、このパススルー。(Japanese)

Anche questo passerà (Italian)

또한 이되리라. (Korean)

Auch dies wird an vorbeigehen (German)

גם זה לעבור (Hebrew)

Aussi ceci passera (French)

Кроме того, в этом должны пройти (Russian)

同时,这将通过 (Chinese)

También esto pasará (Spanish)

अल्सो थिस् wइल्ल् पस्स् (Sanskrit)