To the over-reactors who live with me, I sometimes advise, "It's not the end of the world; in fact, only the end of the world is the end of the world." Does not qualify as "memorable speech," one straightforward definition of poetry. But on a similar note, though tilted toward grown-up over-reactors, I recently stumbled on this, by the poet William Stafford:
It's All Right
Someone you trusted has treated you bad.
Someone has used you to vent their ill temper.
Did you expect anything different?
Your work--better than some others'--has languished,
neglected. Or a job you tried was too hard,
and you failed. Maybe weather or bad luck
spoiled what you did. That grudge, held against you
for years after you patched up, has flared,
and you've lost a friend for a time. Things
at home aren't so good; on the job your spirits
have sunk. But just when the worst bears down
you find a pretty bubble in your soup at noon,
and outside at work a bird says, "Hi!"
Slowly the sun creeps across the floor;
it is coming your way. It touches your shoe.
John Prine, visibly scarred on the occasion by more than one cancer surgery, has a song I like on the same subject:
The lyric to the second stanza goes:
I was sitting in the bathtub counting my toes
When the radiator broke, the water all froze
I was stuck in the ice without my clothes
Naked as the eyes of a clown.
I was crying ice cubes, hoping I'd croak
When the sun come through the window, the ice all broke
I stood up and laughed, thought it was a joke
That's the way that the world goes 'round.
As has been pointed out, saying "Calm down" has had the desired effect never, for no one, but maybe these can help.
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