You are right…those who are under the harrow cannot see it pressing them down. They know they are not free, but they can’t see a way out.

“I know there’s a comical side to a toad under a harrow; the question is, does the toad see it?”–L. M. Montgomery.

Anyway, thanks again for responding to me, orinoco womble.

“Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not charity, I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal. And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries, and all knowledge; and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, and have not charity, I am nothing. And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, and have not charity, it profiteth me nothing. Charity suffereth long, and is kind; charity envieth not; charity vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up, Doth not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil; Rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth; Beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things. Charity never faileth; but whether there be prophecies, they shall fail; whether there be knowledge, it shall vanish away. For we know in part, and we prophecy in part. But when that which is perfect is come, then that which is in part shall be done away. When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things. For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known. And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity.” (1 Cor 13:1-13)

I thought the context of the passage you referenced important. Sometimes when I read this passage I am put in mind of the immanence of a conversion experience, the latter of which is either a heightened state of psychological denial, or something incommensurate with theories of psychology. The writer makes a necessarily imaginative analogy when he speaks of the child’s relationship to the man: the unknowable distance at which he sets the certain future unsettles the notion of a clear cut distance between parent and child.

More to the point, I like being reminded that love is an ongoing practice. I have erred countless times in love; one hopes the universe is forgiving, loves the universe in the meantime.

There are different kinds of lightness, just as there are radically different kinds of human beings. I want to become light in ways that allow me to continue to feel the call of conscience, which is another way of saying that I want to learn and grow as the kind of human I was born to be:

“the world seems to pour through you into me / even if God made me to be alone in the simplicity / that I was wished to be.”

Forgetting is lightness, yes, but one need not bear one’s suffering alone.

Changes like the ones you are describing put so much distance between you then and you now.