Tag Archives: Albert Camus

Walk Your Path

Posted on May 29, 2017 by ivonprefontaine

We each walk our own path. Others can walk beside us, hold our hand, and be there. What they cannot do is live our lives.

I thought about traveling today, as I prepare for my trip tomorrow. It brought several quotes to mind about the paths we travel and what that means.

“Don’t walk behind me; I may not lead. Don’t walk in front of me; I may not follow. Walk beside me and be my friend.” Camus

“It’s your road, and yours alone. Others may walk it with you, but no one can walk it for you.” Rumi

“Pursue some path, however narrow and crooked, in which you can walk with love and reverence.” Thoreau

The reflecting led me to look through some notes and this poem emerged.

Walk it so may be glorious.

Your courage is your truth

Let it shine a light on the path.

Discover beauty in what you give

Let it be the path you seek.

Walk at your pace

Be present in the world.

Walk with your story

Follow the questions of your quest.

Find a space to catch a glimpse of yourself

It is a space to dance, sing, and live.

Be vulnerable in that space

It is makes you who you are.

This is a path at Sunwapta Falls in Jasper National Park. We walked down to the see the falls and Kathy took the picture as I walked back up. The roots and people walking wove a pattern and story into the path.

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The Uses of Not

Posted on May 20, 2017 by ivonprefontaine

Jacques Derrida wrote, when we speak of one thing, we invoke its opposite and what it is not. For example, to speak of a man or woman I speak of its opposite a woman or a man. Instead of understood as opposites, things, including words and ideas, complement each other, making them whole.

Albert Camus suggested “there is no love of life without despair of life.” Without one, we cannot have the other. Compassion means to share one’s love and suffering with each other. When we look deeper and are mindful of what we see, we recognize the how what is not readily evident is needed to make the whole of something.

This is not a new idea. Lao Tzu wrote this poem about what makes something useful is what complements it: the hub and spokes of a wheel; the hollow of a pot and the clay; and doors and windows and the room. Each profits from what it is not.

Often, there is paradox in understanding how things and people complement one another, making them whole.

Thirty spokes

meet in the hub.

Where the wheel isn’t

is where it’s useful

Hollowed out,

clay makes a pot.

Where the pot’s not

is where it’s useful.

Cut doors and windows

to make a room.

Where the room isn’t,