When I was five, I had a porpoise stuffy that I took on a family vacay to Hawaii and lost. Parents say I ran around and bawled down the place crying, “Where’s my poi-pus?! I’ve lost my poi-pus!”
As humans, we seek the meaning of life. We seek poi-pus. But how do we find it?
Enter «edges» into the chat. Edges: where something ends, and something else begins.
Once upon a time, I was only water. I didn’t know where I began and ended. My poi-pus was to fill in the edges given to me. Culture, parents, teachers, and peers defined those edges. Later, the different cultures I lived in reshaped them.
Being water is good because it allows you to evolve. Case in point: I pulled my daughter out of school this week and started homeschooling her…. a post for another time.
Walls contain our water and shape. We’ve all experienced so many walls these last 8 years with political and pandemic upheaval.
Within those walls, I found my edges… I found where I begin, and the rest of the world ends. The walls have shaped my nebulous ennui into something solid and hard.
When I lived in Kingston, Jamaica, to be called “hard” was the highest compliment. Jamaica knows a thing or two about hardship. Then, Kingston had the highest rate of homicide for any city in the Americas.
I, on the other hand, was not hard. I was soft, the opposite of hard. I had no walls, no struggle to harden me.
In Jamaica, the worst insult you could say to someone was: “You don’t know yourself.” Without edges, I didn’t know myself either.
It took a governor flat-funding education to turn me into an education activist. It took a president who separated immigrant parents from children at the border without any plan for reunification to turn me into an activist for immigrant rights. It took a conservative husband to root me firmly in my liberal beliefs. It took pandemic PTSD for me to discover a sense of humor (and publish around 100 satire pieces in the process).
Like art, our negative space defines our positive space. Everything is duality. The negative gives us something to push back on and gives us purpose. And the rage keeps me warm in the cold, soggy Southeast Alaskan months of August through July.
In his newsletter “Daily Meditation," Richard Rohr says that it does our children no service when we give them zero boundaries. What are they up against? How can they define themselves against nothing? Like a whale uses echolocation, how do we determine our location without walls?
Every wall we bump against is an opportunity to harden ourselves, to know ourselves, and to create our shape.
The Bhagavad Gita, a key scripture in the Yoga philosophy of Krishna, teaches that true strength and growth come from overcoming obstacles. I also suggest reading Dr. Wendy Pabich’s article about turning anger into “sacred rage.”
And we can all learn from this scene in 80s movie Weird Science where Kelly LeBrock summons mutant biker demons to a party to give Gary and Wyatt some confidence:
Has struggle made you stronger? Did obstacles show you who you are? Sound off in the comments.
Also, if you like these newsletters and want to help me retire from my part-time teaching job so I can write more and homeschool my daughter, please upgrade your subscription. A yearly subscription is only $4/month, the price of a coffee! Thank you a million to those of you who have already done so. I love you!
Summer
Thank you for smashing that heart and sharing, as it helps others find this!
Those walls are losses in a sense and each loss reshapes us and the world around us. It turns what we’ve taken for granted into something sharp and undeniable. When we lose something we begin to see its true shape. Absence feels at first like a hollow ache or a gaping void, depending on the loss. In that emptiness, we start to understand what mattered. Loss doesn’t just take, it reveals. Like the frame around a painting, it sets the edges that make the picture clear.
What limits us often shows us what we value. A broken arm reminds us of the simple joy of reaching out, while a broken heart teaches us the depth of love we’re capable of. The walls we push against, the obstacles and boundaries we face, define what we’re willing to fight for. Losing something doesn’t just highlight its absence; it reminds us of what’s worth holding onto, what’s worth rebuilding.
Loss isn’t just an ending, it’s a way of learning to see differently. It strips away the blur of comfort and routine, forcing us to focus on what we truly need, what we truly want. In that negative space, we don’t just find grief; we find clarity, and with it, the chance to fill what’s missing with something meaningful.
Thank you for this article. It was meaningful.
I love these existential, philosophical pontifications! Yes, be like water, but water alone, without boundaries or walls, is just water. A river is defined by the earth it cuts, that then holds it.
I could ponder this all day!
Thanks for starting my day on the right path!