A Review: Notes on Love and Courage

Title of Work: Notes on Love and Courage
Author: Hugh Prather
Dates Read: November 2022, sporadic
Format: Print, distinct and short thoughts as notes. Sometimes following a temporary theme or vein for a few pages but each entry is fashioned as a sort of wisdom bomb.

Posted: Goodreads, December 3rd, 2022
Rating: 4/5
Review:

This book entered my life through a series of interesting and synchronous circumstances. Well, I guess the circumstances are always interesting and synchronous looking back. As they are lived, they tumble out, cascading in a manner that does not always feel so intentional or connected.

A long and wandering journey across the US had brought me there. From an abandoned career in the Midwest, a level starting block and with echoes of a past I had already grown to appreciate but ached to depart, to True West with mountains I had flirted among before but could now more intimately know. A wild call from the North—no, not the North of Lincoln or Ivy League or Great Lakes—lured me to Alaska and showed me subsistence and ruggedness and commercial fishing and boreal illuminations on cold, clear nights. I descended several rungs of latitude in an attempt to summit a glaciated peak. I briefly returned “home” although I no longer associated the feeling of home with the place, only with the people I knew would still be there. I was now a visitor in the region that reared me, that agrarian bread basket that nourished the performances and aspirations of a nation I was citizen of first by birth then by choice much later. All the while, through a range of geographic neighborhoods and diverse biomes, at least two things were true:

1. Everywhere I went I learned there was love happening whether I was there to experience it or not.
2. An isolated archipelago pulled magnetically at some as-yet unidentified essence or mineral I suspect had accumulated deep within bones and tissues. This pull was stronger at times but ever present and unwilling to be ignored or unnoticed.

Along the way I found comfort and generosity with relatives and dear friends. I witnessed every kind of marriage, a home birth, and was first in my extended family to lay eyes and nervous hands on two, arguably three, infant additions to the tree. I served as guardian and caretaker for four of my sister’s children during a family emergency as if they were my own. I fell in love over and over again while I reconnected with the people that mattered, the ones who had always cared for me but had not quite known how to love me from afar. To the second truth, I became aware early on that I was being drawn to Hawai’i and I had to meander through many landscapes and relationships to get there. I was repeatedly barging in on then slowly assimilating into family dynamics everywhere I stayed much longer than a few days and I feel now like I was being prepared or even evaluated for the emotional gamut I would be subjected to during my time on those islands.

If at this point you find yourself wondering, “will any of this so-called review judge, describe, even mention the title of the work to which four out of five stars have been given?”, to that I would like to say this: Notes on Love and Courage is a collection of contemplations and proverbs arrived at through a life of imperfect love, untimely loss, pervading confusion, and clarity cathartic in its arrival but taxing in its acquisition. We are all on this journey and I happen to be on a particularly trying leg of it as of late. If you can offer me your patience, I will finally explain how my reception of this work was so perfectly timed relative to the love and courage filling my life recently.

I landed on Big Island and took up residence on a quiet property in the more rural and green Hamakua Coast north of Hilo (more rural and green in stark contrast to the volcanic desert of the Kona side). The property where I found work catered to those travelers who wished to experience Hawai’i without spending life savings on accommodation at one of those pristine resorts adorning the coastline. Facilities were simple but more than sufficient. Power and water both came from the sky and this off-grid lifestyle demanded compromises which I was quite willing to accommodate. I worked a little, walked shirtless and shoeless under the sun often, and grew closer to travelers and coworkers, often one and the same. I had much time for leisure and contemplation out in that green place and I was close enough to town for convenience but not so close to suffer undue distraction. I read, I wrote, I thought. For a while, I was at peace. I found ample opportunity to slow down and frequently wound up rather invested in some emotional heart to heart with another willing and curious soul, some intimate laying bare of traumas, hopes, and personal philosophies. In the midst of one of these processions of vulnerable moments Aaron, now surely a friend and becoming one even then, abruptly pranced off to his room with an over the shoulder, “I’ll be right back!” and returned moments later with a tattered and stained copy of, you guessed it, Notes on Love and Courage by Hugh Prather. He said, “A guy I was fucking gave this to me but I don’t read like that so…” and shyly handed the book to me. “I think you might enjoy it.”

I didn’t read it for a few weeks as I was already working on several titles that commanded my attention. Emmanuel saw it on my stack—my improvised personal travel library compiled from volumes found on free shelves, dusty thrift stores, and pleasant used book purveyors—and devoured it in a day. She emphasized that I had to read it. Finally, slowly and over several weeks split between that peaceful property on Big Island and the bustle and busyness of my next accommodation in Wailuku, Maui, I took in the messages of this book. They are all vaguely relatable and I consumed each with a caution born from a misattributed skepticism of self-help content but every few pages a note would reach out and grip my heart. I would be made to look away, to close my eyes and exhale slowly as the poignance of the message sunk in. Not unlike horoscopes in this vaguely generic but occasionally cutting relevancy, I know that this collection is not for everyone. But I will say, if you find yourself in love or having loved and lost; if you hate ugly aspects of yourself but aspire to love these too; if you fear growing old and wish for comfort in light of lines and spots that grow without your consent; if you wish to be a better friend, then you may find wisdom between these covers. Well, my copy only had a front cover, the rear surely lost to much shuffling and bending and gifting over the years. As my sappy sentimentality knows no bounds I’ll tell you this struck me as softly symbolic. Only the title bearing front cover kept the thoughts within contained, hidden from me until that perfect moment when my heart was ready and moved my hands accordingly. Opening this book opened me to a reflection and appreciation of where I am and what I’ve passed through to get here. There is no end to this process until death, no back cover to close, only a quiet continuation and, I hope, a thoughtful willingness to move forward into the next chapter of my development.