The earth of things

An old post from the Happiness blog, featuring a long-married pair of preeminent poets now both passed, reminding us why it's so vital that we humans keep moving forward and thinking about a better tomorrow. 

That's meliorism, which "treats salvation as neither inevitable nor impossible. It treats it as a possibility, which becomes more and more of a probability the more numerous the actual conditions of salvation become."

"It is clear that pragmatism must incline towards meliorism." Isn't it? Meliorists move forward, ideal by realized ideal, to see what may be made of our brief and flitting lives and of those still to come.

The poets remind us as well that we mustn't squander what James called the sufficiency of the present moment. It's in such moments of presence that the "earth of things" speaks most eloquently of the continuity of all time and the remembrance of things past.

I don't think happiness really comes to rocks and rainfall and wineglasses, but the poet is entitled to her license. I think her point is that it's here amidst the stuff of life, or for us it's nowhere. 

There’s just no accounting for happiness,
or the way it turns up like a prodigal
who comes back to the dust at your feet
having squandered a fortune far away

...

It even comes to the boulder
in the perpetual shade of pine barrens,
to rain falling on the open sea,
to the wineglass, weary of holding wine.

--Happiness by Jane Kenyon 

Likewise, her husband the Sox fan. She's gone, and his attention has turned to his things.

William James, a poet among philosophers and an excellent philosopher of happiness, would have approved.

The really vital question for us all is, What is this world going to be? What is life eventually to make of itself? The center of gravity of philosophy must therefore alter its place. The earth of things, long thrown into shadow by the glories of the upper ether, must resume its rights. Pragmatism

Happiness on earth must be found on earth. Even those who invest themselves in dreams of heaven still do their dreaming here.

Such a simple point, but so elusive for so many.