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| Kurt Vonnegut and "So it goes" |
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And "so it goes," to quote author Kurt Vonnegut, who knew a thing or two about indulgences and vice -- but also time travel -- and who lived through changes I can only imagine.
I've been reading -- er, listening to, rather -- an audiobook of Kurt Vonnegut's "Slaughterhouse-Five." Vonnegut uses the phrase, "So it goes," so often that it becomes a mantra, of sorts.
Many of his readers express annoyance at his frequent use of the phrase. But as a survivor of World War II's Battle of the Bulge, where nearly 20,000 American troops were killed -- and as a subsequent prisoner of war in Dresden, Germany (which was bombed by Allied forces while he was imprisoned there), Vonnegut believed that we ultimately lack free will in life and death, that we are virtually in control of nothing. By repeating, "So it goes," to himself in his life and in his writing, he said it helped him "make sense of the senseless." As one who admires Vonnegut not just for his writing but for his service, I appreciate the thoughtful way he worked through life's difficulties with those three small words.
And when things do make sense -- like when I look into the eyes of someone I love and see infinity or when I take a walk just before sunrise and feel the stillness of the world before birds have awakened, before the hum of cars fan off in every direction -- I sometimes take a deep breath and thankfully say, "So it goes." And I can find sense in the senseless, but I can also find the magic and mystery in life. And I have a sweet little mantra to lead the way.
No matter the darkness we live through, no matter the questions we all have, if we can realize that the clock keeps ticking and the Earth continues to dance around the sun and that we are here to see it happen, that alone can be a beautiful start to a bigger understanding -- or it can just be enough. It's a big, mysterious world, and that alone -- knowing we're alive -- could be all I need to know right now.
Another year. Another sunrise. Another tick of the clock.
So it goes.
- A. McClain |
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