How to Hold What Harrows You

How to Hold What Harrows You By Maria Popova We are shaped by all we have suffered — by what harrows us — and in turn shape our lives by how we hold our harrowing. Harrow shares its Middle English root with harvest. It is by suffering, and by what we make of our suffering, that our personhood ripens in us, that we come to reap what evolution sowed long ago when mitochondria first set out to become mind — our capacity for empathy, for doubt, for art. Harrowing may be the hallmark of our humanity — an AI cannot be harrowed because it does not have hopes, only directives. This may be why John Steinbeck considered hope “the tragic miracle of consciousness” — miraculous because it violates the laws of probability to consecrate the possible, and tragic because it is constantly colliding with the will of the world, constantly devastated by the impartial brutality of time and chance. Harrowing is the price we pay for hope, for being fully human. And so, a poem: HARROWING by Maggie SmithThis world is harrowing, harrowing, all harrow, as if harrow were what the world is made of, what we are made of, as if harrow were strings to be strummed, tendons and veins to be strummed, as if harrow could be snapped between the teeth, the word one letter from the white meal inside our bones, the meal we could make of ourselves, harrow, two letters from the bird who might strum with its beak what the body is made of, what the world is made of, and in that strumming become the song. “Harrowing” comes from Maggie Smith’s benediction of a book Good Bones (public library). Couple it with Nick Cave on how to use your harrowing, then revisit Marcus Aurelius on turning your suffering into strength. — Published August 6, 2026 — https://www.themarginalian.org/2026/08/06/maggie-smith-harrowing/ — ABOUT CONTACT SUPPORT SUBSCRIBE Newsletter RSS CONNECT Facebook Twitter Instagram Tumblr