Editors Choice, January 2011

year end

thinking of what ifs

and what might have beens

by Victor P. Gendrano

Since Christmas I have been reading a biography of T. S. Eliot written by the British author, Peter Ackroyd. It has been such a depressing reading and I have been duly depressed by what it has to say. He is for me one of the three greatest ‘depressants’ along with Arthur Schopenhauer and Friedrich Nietzsche whom one would be ill-advised to approach without having enough antidote of positivism. However, my adoration for Eliot’s poems has not been diminished by this. On the contrary, it has been augmented and reinforced.

Life is full of miseries and we all normally experience each of our shares of misery in our lifetime. If happiness, or avoidance of depression, is important for one, one is well-advised to ‘rise above’ depressing things in life, most notably death. Easier said than done, of course, but rise above we must. One solution, which I have long been seeking and so far have failed to achieve each and every time, is to ‘know’ ‘truly’ what depresses us and to ‘embrace’ (as distinct from accepting) and be ‘resigned’ to it. I put all key words in inverted commas because they are open to all sorts of interpretations and need to be qualified.

One haiku poet, who I feel seems to have achieved the unachievable described above, at least to a very significant degree, is the author of this issue’s Editor’s Choice. As a result his policy may have become “Rejoice at what deserves to be enjoyed in life and rise above what should be consigned to history or dust bin.” In real life, however, things are not in such black and white terms. In the grey area in between them we struggle. When one looks back the twelve months that are going to end soon one has mixed feelings. The haiku I have chosen eloquently expresses such feelings, all too human, all too true. These are also very much akin to the feelings which have been expressed by Eliot’s pen and also countless times in Japanese haiku.