Reaching Out for the Silver lLning

In 2020 amidst a raging pandemic, the district of South Brunswick, New Jersey, USA honored an eleven-year tradition of engaging students through a common reading experience called SB reads. The theme of the program: silver linings---- encouraging students to find their own bright spot and read about characters who discovered their silver lining amidst challenges and setbacks. Soon the prophetic line “there’s always a silver lining … find yours” appeared on every school communication as a crisp banner at bottom of a white sky of an A4. I too scribbled the words on paper, taped it onto the windowpane where my daughter would hopefully see it between break-out rooms and share screens. I forgot the maxim, but its winds began to blow in my home.

One day as I pulled the screen away from the window the line showed itself on the paper, now dangling by a single tape. I pondered what could the phrase mean in a broader context and was led to write and find out. How can we today living in a virtual world with scarce in-person interactions with friends and loved ones find our bright spot and importantly continue going back to it every single day? Does finding our bright spot equate to a pool of talent or an eager yearning, a righteous thirst? And will not working on the silver lining save us, our world, and the world at large? As a writer once wrote, we work on the “it” or believe we are working on the “it” and before we know it the “it” begins to work on us, begins to tie the tides and ebbs of our days, braid little joys and big worries to transmute into wonderful pieces of artistic expression or munificent humanitarian causes.

Dr. Seuss in his seminal book Oh the places you will go urges his readers to find the grit inherent in them through life’s highs and lows. An extract:

But On you will go though the weather be foul

On you will go though your enemies prowl

On you will go through the Haken - kaks howl

Onward many up a frightening creeks

Though your arms may get sore

And your sneakers leak

So how exactly are we to go through these dips, highs, and curves in leaking sneakers? Is the bright spot or silver lining a distant thing to work towards or is it a minuscule joy with afterglows that sliver through our days?

For my daughter, an elementary school student finding the bright spot was instant……art she trumpeted. Art with its messy, bold strokes, its orange-pink blobs on the sky, the yellow and green, inaccessible community park swings, or the dark night curtain with silvery stars and a coarse, three-quarter moon. Art because it makes her relax, separates her brain cells, slows the trail of her breath. Art that makes her believe in the unitive beauty that we are all made of the same powdery dust of the universe, our yellow laughter, grey fears, periwinkle dreams. Did not the painter Vincent Van Gogh justify his work (silver lining ) with the seething words?------ “ I am seeking. I am striving. I am in it with all my heart.” Her friend’s bright spot evokes a sense of power, a controlled tensile strength as she displays a series of karate chops than with a jungle yell cuts the air with a fiery kick to twirl and land on her resting place where it all began. Her eyes are aglow after meeting her strength. Undoubtedly their silver linings allow the steam to let off their overwhelmed minds and bouncing bodies.

For the writers --- us who attempt to trap thoughts that scuttle away like home spiders or attempt to move the obstinate rocks of words around,  a silver lining beckons to that horizon where hoary poets and writers assemble------  a livewire that briefly presents itself within our beings on the completion of a poem, a story---- until we decide to chase it again for a new tale around the bend. Speaking for myself the silver lining evokes the gunmetal image of a parallel bar with longitudinal pipes of reading-touching the heart of words, teaching-sharing------ to then welcome the horizontal welds of the written words. Every day, I haul my spirit up to build the thought muscles, stare at the blinking cursor, the lined clouds on my notebook, wrestling with the muse for my share of stories.

Meanwhile, at our home, we are reading the lodestar of all books: Matilda by Roald Dahl. Our hearts broke to read about the little, brilliant girl born to parents the absolute scum of the universe. But from the books she reads, Matilda gleans true grit, the characters in the tomes reassuring her with the argent promise that she is not alone. She walks this tight rope of “you are not alone” to get across the valley of naysayers who believe she is a twit, a twerp, a mere girl harshly oblivious to her scintillant mind. Ultimately the blood of the written words she loves to read, empowers her to unleash an act of fitting revenge on the obnoxious, tyrannical headmistress Mrs. Trunchbull and to end her cruel reign. Indeed, the silver line “you are not alone” assures her way out of a wretched quagmire.

But doesn’t the luminous furrow also tether us to our days? our duties?........ yet lift us above drab, mandatory monotony. In Rumi’s words:

Work. Keep digging your well.

Don’t think about getting off from work

Submit to a daily practice

Your loyalty to that is a ring on the door.

Often this band of working hope arises from dead-end situations, indicating a u-turn to the despondent being. Nisha Madhulika, the 62-year chef Youtuber began sharing vegetarian recipes on her blog as she struggled to come to terms with the empty nest syndrome. All she knew was to cook lip-smacking dishes and this is what she offered from her corner of the world. She now has over 10.4 million subscribers and countless cookbooks to her credit. A dear, elderly lady in my extended family faced difficulties going through similar changes and isolation. Her husband was retired, the children grown up and living their challenges. Moreover, the grandchildren she fed and looked after were now independent, my space teenagers. The malaise of not being needed made her count each heavy, empty day. She needed a spark, the whit of fire to energize her life. I thought about her considerable pool of talents and encouraged her to begin knitting again, a craft she possessed an unparalleled mastery over. But a frozen shoulder further clamped her dexterity and knitting needles. So instead, she began knitting accessories requiring less effort like caps, gloves, mufflers an absolute must in Delhi’s unforgiving winters. The vibrant Scandinavian and English color palettes made up for the reduced intricacy of pattern. Her grandkids uploaded her designs on local Whatsapp groups, Instagram and now aunty is flooded with orders or should I say neighborhood requests. Once a week aunty holds classes to share her talent. She has no desire to build an empire but the fuzzy, wooly, multicolored silver lining now cloaks her days in the warmth of being needed, appreciated. Both women and countless like them decided the scope of their work but were undoubtedly taken beyond the limitations of their current situations by discovering their glowing spot.

For the noble ones, the silver lining comprises serving others. I often observe successful people unwilling to face the space within that remains empty, the space seeking more, the more that does not fill up with a quick upload seeking fame. To chase the more, one requires stepping into the wilderness of uncertainty. A particular gentleman, a dear family friend is a lion in the corporate world. He flies a personal plane to taste the freedom of skies and crafts furniture out of chunks of wood. While the thoughts shape up within him, he leaves no stone unturned coordinating logistics to feed hundreds at a huge soup kitchen of New Jersey. Halfway around the world India’s biggest philanthropist Azim Premji shares half of his wealth with the needy. Sue Gandhi of Illinois featured in NBS news is another one. She converted her garage into a food pantry for the last ten years. Her silver lining comprises asking two big-hearted questions: “what do you need?”, “How can I help you?”

Irrespective of our resources the silver lining calls to the highest in all of us. Finding this silver lining makes our personal grievances feel like nasty bumps on the road, necessitating a mere changing of gears. When we create or perform something pure, an act beyond us made possible by harnessing all that is challenged, often broken but onward marching within us, we become a working cog in the universe’s time machine. Perhaps tilting the axis of our deeds to serve this world or creating something sublime to discover(save) ourselves is the answer to finding the lambent silver lining .... by whichever way ... dancing, painting, writing, or sprinting towards it ...the “it” of a luminous yearning, the torch lighting gravelly pathways and shrouded, beating caverns.