Speaking of mantras, this new year I've adopted a new one, which I am determined to repeat to myself every morning, it goes exactly like this: "each day a gift." Maybe sans quotation marks.
There's a great book by Lewis Hyde that illuminates "the gift" in our lives and imaginings. I'd like to be as expansive as possible and say that whether there's a loving god or not, whether, we can look to randomness or chance, or some benign or malignant force that's overseeing our every move, or not, we have been given, or we happen to inherit or, well, whatever, we are alive and it's a state of grace, I mean this life that we have can be snatched from us at any time, we might as well enjoy it, embrace it to the fullest, it's a gift whether there's a giver or not.
There have been times when life has seemed like a burden or a chore, or a punishment, but really these are cracked visions...life is only a gift...whether we like it or not, whether we want it or not...it's ours...to do as we please. But as Robert Stone reminds us, this gift comes with attachments, it is not free, and that is our dilemma, our challenge, we pay the price every day for a gift we didn't ask to receive.
I was reading a review of Robert Stone's new memoir about the sixties "Prime Green," and this passage really caught my eye, it seemed to sum up a certain credo that may have outlived it's usefulness: "In our time, we were clamorous and vain. I speak not only for myself here, but for all those with whom I shared the era and what I think of it's attitudes. We wanted it all; sometimes we confused self-destructiveness with virtue and talent, obliteration with ecstasy, heedlessness with courage. Worshipping the doctrines of Hemingway as we did, we wanted constant grace under constant pressure, and stoicism before a disillusionment that somehow never went stale. We wanted to die well every single day, to be a cool guy and a good-looking corpse. How absurd, because nothing is free, and we had to learn that at last. We were the chief victims of our own mistakes, measuring ourselves against the master of the present, we regret nothing except our failure to prevail."