In King Lear, the marvelous play by William Shakespeare, the Duke of Albany explains to wicked Oswald that “Striving to better, oft we mar what’s well” (Act I, Scene IV). In other words, even when we humans try to improve something and hold the best of intentions, we can destroy. Our sinful and fallen natures elude us.
Shakespeare hardly urges us to settle for mediocre, but he does suggest human weakness and urges a certain prudent caution by that assertion. We could perhaps translate Shakespeare’s sentiment into the well-known warning, “let sleeping dogs lie.”
I agree with much of Shakepeare’s wisdom, including here. However—for a moment—I would like to turn this idea of “harming what is presently okay by well-reasoned intervention” on its head and look from a different angle.
Yes, we may mar what we try to mend, but in the marring we can also mend—mend not just ourselves, but our worlds. We come to know things as we mar them.
Recently, I went down to the water to fish. I realized there that in casting out a line, I would undoubtedly harm whatever creature gulped down the hook. Whatever fish sunk into the jagged metal would likely emerge with a wound or a scar at a minimum, even if I released it immediately. Yet in that wounding, that marring, I would find truth and connect with the Divine.
You see, when we fishermen (or fisherwomen, you could say) have a fish on the other end of a fishing line, we are physically connected to another creature, one that is perfectly made to be the kind of thing it is. We feel life itself on the other end, a being, albeit one lower than a human, that fights with vigor to live, nevertheless.
A fish does not even comprehend the eternity of life, yet it begs for it with thrashing fins and throbbing gills; a fish knows perhaps more difficulty in unforgiving Nature than luxurious humans do in their air-conditioned shelters, yet it strives without despair. Animals act on instinct and desire life, while humans so often throw life away or call living meaningless, scoffing at God’s goodness, creation, and provision. In the marring of a fish, a fish that was perfectly content to wile its ordinary days away in the fair watery realm, we learn a better way to view life and, I daresay, gain life from the pulsating line.
Yes, I go down to the water to find Life. Not just life, but Life, the Son of God, who taught us that life is a gift and beautiful and that He is everywhere. We ought not to despair at life but rather fight as hard as that fish to fulfill our places and roles as God’s creatures, buoyed in spirit.
We mar but for an instant, receiving through all of life’s trials true glimpses of eternity, brought into fuller relief as we understand Nature and Nature’s matchless God.