Someone I love said to me: “It’s no use, as much as we strive for happiness, we can never achieve it. We are a flawed creation, a flawed design. So why bother? We are destined to fail…”
I cannot refute it, my dear, we are flawed indeed. But are we destined to fail? Why?
I remember a haiku by a great Portuguese poet David Mourão Ferreira:
David was a great man and a great poet, but still, I think he was as wrong as my friend.
Only when we give up do we fail.
Only when we give up that one invisible wing -delicate and fragile as dragonfly’s-that helps us soar: our intuition, our inner eye, that miraculous sixth sense.
Only then do we limp, blundering blindly and hopelessly into the frightful unknown.
So we are two and a half parts angel wings, one part iridescent dragonfly.
So what?
I’ll admit it makes for a lopsided flight, perhaps not the most graceful, but so beautifully hopeful.
How lovely, how enchanting we are, we things of many parts: fire and flight and flaws.
Ultimately all creations are flawed, works in progress, I suppose.
We do not stand alone in this.
Do you know it was scientifically proved by engineers that bees can’t fly?
It’s supposed to be physically impossible.
The design is all wrong.
Nothing works.
Except the part where they do fly.
So tell me, my dear, what holds them up?
Hope? Belief? Desire?
Dreams of dancing on lilies?
Has to be something.
I think it’s magic, or love.
Maybe it’s both, or they are the same thing.
Design flaws are in the eye of the beholder, so we can waste our time cataloguing flaws and adding up reasons why we can’t fly; or we can unfurl our gorgeous mismatched wings and dance off and harvest sweetness.
The choice is ours.
Manuela Cardiga
I cannot refute it, my dear, we are flawed indeed. But are we destined to fail? Why?
I remember a haiku by a great Portuguese poet David Mourão Ferreira:
We have five senses
Two and a half
Sets of wings
How then can we fly?
David was a great man and a great poet, but still, I think he was as wrong as my friend.
Only when we give up do we fail.
Only when we give up that one invisible wing -delicate and fragile as dragonfly’s-that helps us soar: our intuition, our inner eye, that miraculous sixth sense.
Only then do we limp, blundering blindly and hopelessly into the frightful unknown.
So we are two and a half parts angel wings, one part iridescent dragonfly.
So what?
I’ll admit it makes for a lopsided flight, perhaps not the most graceful, but so beautifully hopeful.
How lovely, how enchanting we are, we things of many parts: fire and flight and flaws.
Ultimately all creations are flawed, works in progress, I suppose.
We do not stand alone in this.
Do you know it was scientifically proved by engineers that bees can’t fly?
It’s supposed to be physically impossible.
The design is all wrong.
Nothing works.
Except the part where they do fly.
So tell me, my dear, what holds them up?
Hope? Belief? Desire?
Dreams of dancing on lilies?
Has to be something.
I think it’s magic, or love.
Maybe it’s both, or they are the same thing.
Design flaws are in the eye of the beholder, so we can waste our time cataloguing flaws and adding up reasons why we can’t fly; or we can unfurl our gorgeous mismatched wings and dance off and harvest sweetness.
The choice is ours.
Manuela Cardiga
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