Mary Oliver wrote in one of her wonderful poems that you can despair with me, and I can despair with you, and so let’s move on. Maria’s cactus is an imagined world if you look at it carefully enough, long enough, and in the right light.

I love that poem, and I love that thought. We all know sadness, we all know pain and loss. Is mine better or worse than mine, and sometimes – often, for me – I am reminded that so many others have so much more to despair of than me. In the Kabbalah, a prophet writes that the key is wisdom was learning that everyone’s suffering is worse than his. So he moved on from his despair.

We control so little of life, that much, at least is our choice.