A week ago, the world marked Mental Health Day. This year’s theme was ‘Access to Services — Mental Health in Catastrophes and Emergencies’.
According to the World Health Organization, one in five people who have experienced war or conflict in the past ten years suffers from depression, anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder, bipolar disorder, or schizophrenia. The theme also underscores the need to safeguard mental well-being in times of global crises.
The thought got me falling back on an old classic. In an age prone to doomscrolling, reading Mary Oliver, who won the Pulitzer Prize in 1984, can be an antidote to anxiety.
Someone I loved once gave me
a box full of darkness.
It took me years to understand
that this, too, was a gift.
‘Uses of Sorrow’ by Oliver comprises just these four lines. The second line — ‘a box full of darkness’ — reflects how sorrows are often narrowed down and compartmentalised. Some boxes spill over with time.
Yet, in the end, the poet suggests that even sorrow could be a gift. Perhaps the poems she wrote were born of her wounds, and the healing she later basked in led to a deeper understanding of life.
‘Don’t Hesitate’, another poem by Oliver, is a call to celebrate the little joys that come our way. She loved taking solitary walks in the woods. It is said that she would hide pencils in trees along her usual routes and carry scraps of paper in her pockets so that she was never short of a writing tool when inspiration struck.
She begins ‘Don’t Hesitate’ with these lines:
If you suddenly and unexpectedly feel joy, don’t hesitate. Give in to it.
The poet goes on to say that we are not often kind — especially not kind enough to ourselves — to seize a slice of happiness when it blooms amid catastrophe.
It could be anything,
but very likely you notice it in the instant
when love begins.
Oliver reminds us not to be afraid of the vastness of joy in life. Joy, she writes, is not meant to be a crumb. Accept happiness, embrace it, and celebrate your life. Tomorrow can wait!
The writer is a poet, translator and assistant professor of English at BCM College, Kottayam