On the absolutely essential joy of human communication
There is much we cannot change about the world, but there is one tiny act any of us can do, every day.
Late last night, under a dark sky, I peeled an orange. When I cut into the thick, fresh skin I smelt orange all around me, sharp and bright, scenting everything with a citrus sweetness, so that I imagined the stars had released tiny droplets of orange oil. I felt very alive.
I had planned to write about sobriety this week; that moment with the orange, which happened after supper, quite late, when I might otherwise have felt blurred by the sweet intoxication of white wine, reminded me how intense and fresh the world is, day after day, when you stop drinking. I haven’t drunk for over two and a half years, and my relationship with the world feels stronger and more creative since I removed the barrier of alcohol, because this is what I realise drinking was doing to me: putting up a barrier which blocked something of myself from my senses, the world, the relationships I care most about.
Louis MacNeice wrote about oranges and beauty in his poem, Snow, which is one of my absolute favourites. MacNeice certainly wasn’t sober, but this is a short, beautiful poem with the outstanding lines:
“World is suddener than we fancy it.
World is crazier and more of it than we think,
Incorrigibly plural.”
Sobriety surprises me because alcohol is often sold as something wild and colourful, but my life without alcohol is astonishingly wilder and much more creative than it ever was when I drank. But I’m going to save sobriety for next week, because as I started writing, something quite different - relating to the one tiny thing we can all do to feel more human – emerged through my thoughts and so I’m going to share that here this week instead.