Every Road is Holy

I have a Pinterest board called “Need 2 Read.” It's full of excerpts, quotes, song lyrics, moments from TV shows and movies, etc. that I pin when I feel like I've come across them at the exact right time, when I “need to read” them (hence the name).

Recently, during my nightly scrolling, I came across a poem titled “Culpable” by Joy Sullivan, “I wrote a pep talk recently to myself on a bar napkin: no matter which road you take, it will be both glorious and unbearable. Every road is lonely. Every road, holy. The only error is not walking forth.”

One of my favorite things about media is often other people say, sing or write things we ourselves could never come up with, but perfectly encapsulate how we feel. Sullivan did just that. I truly believe every experience – even the painful ones – is sacred, simply because it’s part of being alive.

Over the past year, I’ve been thinking a lot about the fact that loving anyone comes with the guarantee that one day, we will have to grieve them (or them us). Joy and sorrow aren’t opposites, they’re neighbors. After major losses, it can be extremely scary to feel and feel deeply, because we know vulnerability puts us at risk of hurting later on.

I’ve always thought my brain was quite strange. No mathematical formulas or scientific equations will ever stick, but if I read a quote that resonates with me, it will never leave.

In the same way many people get song lyrics stuck in their heads, I get quotes stuck in mine. I remember reading a line from Robert Frost, “In three words I can sum up everything I’ve learned about life: it goes on.” This line hasn’t left my brain since. I even have a bracelet that says “it goes on,” which I now wear every day. I’ve found these three words so simple, yet profound. Life keeps moving, even through the most unbearable events. So will I.

I used to think the idea of acceptance meant moving on, or letting go, but I now understand it's more the learning to walk beside the ache. In an interview with Anderson Cooper, Stephen Colbert said, “It’s a gift to exist. And with existence comes suffering. I want to be the most human I can be, and that involves acknowledging and ultimately being grateful for the things I wish did not happen.”

Colbert not only accepts the grief, but he is grateful for it. His words offer a reminder that to exist is a gift, even when it hurts. Pain we feel is just the shadow of joy, a testament of how deeply we once loved or were loved. The ache only runs so deep because the joy once did too.

Last December, I started reading a lot of non-fiction books written by women, bonus points if they were about the grieving process or in the self-help genre (God only knows I need it). I was recommended “The Year of Magical Thinking” by Joan Didion and upon opening the first page, I was amazed by her. She was not only a magnificent writer, but also survived so much. Didion became a large part of my daily “Need 2 Read” Pinterest quote doom scrolling. I wanted to gain as much wisdom as I could from her.

I recently stumbled across a quote of hers I hadn’t seen before—which is saying something, considering how deep I’ve gone into her work. In an interview about an upcoming book, Didion said she believed in using the good silver every day because, "every day is all there is."

I really love this sentiment. It's both mundane and profound. It makes me feel like I have permission to treat ordinary days like they’re worth celebrating. Maybe that’s what holiness really is. It's not the absence of pain, grief or sorrow, but the willingness to keep walking through it.

I’d only seen the few lines I previously shared from Joy Sullivan’s “Culpable” on Pinterest, but they lingered with me long after. I finally sought out the full poem, which she closes by writing, “Yesterday, a friend in California, when giving me directions, told me I could take the trail toward the tall pines or turn left and finda field of poppies, growing gold and savage at the edge of the valley. When I asked which to choose, she simply shrugged and said: either way, it’s all heaven.”

Reading that, I thought of how often I stand at a crossroads, desperate to make the right choice. But maybe every road, every joy and every loss is a little slice of heaven too. The only way to find out is to keep living, to keep feeling deeply and to keep loving fully.

Every road will hurt and heal us in equal measure. Every day will ask us to begin again. But that's the gift, that we’re here and we get to keep walking.

Strike out,

Blake Witmer

Editor: McKenna Edwards

Athens

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