The deepest measure of our character, of our very humanity, Maria Popova writes, “is how much we go on giving when what we most value is taken from us — when a loved one withholds their love, when the world withdraws its mercy.” That is what Jane Hirshfield, herself a rare poet and an ordained Buddhist with a philosopher’s eye, explores in her stunning poem “The Weighing.”

The last lines of Hirshfield’s probing poem prompted self-questioning that has morphed into my column for today.

“So few grains of happiness measured against all the dark and still the scales balance.

The world asks of us only the strength we have and we give it.

Then it asks more, and we give it.”

Are the scales truly balanced? How in hell can you balance the oozing rise of authoritarian despots here in America and in the rest of the world with the earthwide slaughter of people and the planet? What God or attempt at democracy is capable of restoring humanity that some of us once imagined?

Who really believes the scales are balanced? What scales? Enough food to feed everyone on our embattled Earth? Enough medicine and those who provide it one-on-one to cure the physical ills of humankind? Enough shelter from the storm of the environment being eviscerated by the out-of-balance power of money, greed and control?

And still the scales balance? I don’t get it. I don’t see it. I am aware that a few people have found a kind of balance that eludes me. I don’t even know what that balance would consist of. Hope? A belief that good will prevent evil from having its way?

Another brilliant poet and essayist, Louise Gluck, in her six-part poem “October,” wrote about hope “as though it were the artist’s duty to create hope, but out of what? what? the word itself false, a device to refute perception.”

Yes, I am keenly aware that there are people who manage to rise up through the ceiling of the dark times I find myself living under. Individuals who work to relieve the suffering of hunger, homelessness, discrimination, the climate crisis, and the ravages of war. I am witness to these people here in Greenfield and way beyond this community. People whose capacity to see the existential extremes in our life sphere … such as the artists who inform my work. People whose way of seeing community and the world I would love to learn in the time I have left to find balance.

I so want to find joy in living in this world, my former taken-for-granted feeling of assurance and appreciation for what I imagined the future would be. Expectations back when I was finding my way up and out of adolescence with a limited knowledge of the world. An incomplete picture of the world that I once accepted, now broken into pieces of truth and disinformation.

I am trying to assemble, or reassemble, the borders of that puzzle into a picture I can trust.

As a result, I am having difficulty in connecting with Jane Hirshfield’s belief that “the world asks of us only the strength we have and [that] we give it.” And giving even more of that strength is more than I know what to deal with. Or what I am capable of. Her words cause me to recede into myself and seek a peaceful path to follow for the rest of my time. It’s too noisy and complicated “out there” for me.

The only way I know of to search for ways to help me find balance is to keep writing my way into the damn question. Each morning, when I arise, I say “hello” to my departed friend Lois, whose gratitude for her own life — a life under assault from terminal cancer — was expressed in a single line: “I am blessed to wake up this day with the choice of my attitude.” This single sentence is embraced within a glorious photo that hangs on the wall at the end of my bed.

Lois was and is an example of a person who broke through the darkening ceiling of despair to bring light to others. After moving to the U.K. from the U.S. in 1967, she worked in nonprofit organizations supporting the most vulnerable in society such as Refugee Action, Water Aid, the Mental Health Foundation, and the International Tibet Network. I miss our transatlantic emails. Remembering our exchange of beliefs, ideas and feelings prompts me to acknowledge and appreciate that there is welcome comfort and connection in knowing I am not alone.

John Bos found his way into words as a reaction to his first bout with cancer in 2002. He was trying to clarify what he was experiencing about his cancer by connecting all the dots in Cancer Connection’s “Spirit of the Written Word” writers workshop. He still does this every other Saturday in the Recorder. As always, comments and questions are invited at john01370@gmail.com.