crushed

love dares you

Ernest Hemingway said, “courage is grace under pressure.”¹ i came across this quote last month. i thought it beautiful, aspirational. i think i actually covered my mouth as i read it.

the idea put pressure on me.

pressure is the application of continuous force, ‘power made operative against resistance, exertion’ force also ‘the capacity to do work or cause physical change.’ i can’t think about pressure, force right now without thinking about Palestine. power made operative in this world so often looks like domination, violence and extraction. it’s a power that will stop at nothing, that does not hold life sacred.

this is the pressure i’ve inherited, internalized. centuries of violence like this, some of which my ancestors participated in directly, all of which i benefit from immensely.

grace is powerful too, though. maybe old EH is saying that courage is about a willingness to meet the pressure with another kind of pressure, another kind of force—love, curiosity. maybe courage is a willingness to not succumb to pressures that other people are choosing.

i hear Queen + David Bowie yelling singing pressure, pushing down on me. the song was first released in October 1981.

they sing, it’s the terror of knowing what this world is about, watching some good friends screaming let me out. it is that terror, and it’s crushing. and courage: can you muster compassion or elegance then? what can you offer, ask for, when you’re crushed?

courage is grace under pressure, heart is unmerited love beneath, amidst force. can i keep heart amidst so much violence? can i be graceful, gracious.

answers to these questions are the only kind of guts that matter to me today. Queen + David Bowie, again, Cause love’s such an old-fashioned word And love dares you to care for the people on the (people on streets) edge of the night and love (people on streets) dares you to change our way of caring about ourselves…….this is ourselves under pressure.

1. i came across this quote in Shira Erlichman’s piece “Our assignment on earth: each other” which is actually from the book Greg McKeown’s book Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less (a concept!)