[Shaahayda Rizvi]

Dear Dr. Olson,

I read with utmost interest your wonderful essay on ‘Ego, Irony and the Goddess’. Your insights on irony took me to a stage in my own life.  You write, “Irony turns things inside out and upside down; it upends and reverses things; irony deconstructs and overthrows, it draws attention to the discrepancy between literal meaning and essential meaning.” Is there a Goddess that then sets the record straight?

Away from mythic realms and poetic insights — there is such a thing as practical irony, and  it’s just the way courtroom dramas take place. It’s called the law of the land. It’s called the sociological function of a mythology. It’s the way lawyers defend and prosecute in lawsuits.  They turn the record upside down, they upend and reverse things. Their unrelated manufactured evidence sets and defines one’s record, while the issue that was the origin of the lawsuit is totally forgotten — it’s left drowning in darkness.

You write, “Irony is the indispensable attitude for engaging the goddess in her depths and darkness—darkness that places the radiance of transcendence in bold relief. Irony is life’s language; it grants one multiple points of view, it lets one see oneself seeing oneself, and mercifully, irony saves us from sarcasm, cynicism, and desuetude, the demoralized manifestations of broken hearts.  ” Those are poetic and sublime words. My hope is that this “Sweet Irony”  stirs the goddess and places radiance of transcendence to all those who face these dark periods, whether behind prison walls, or outside the prison, and for whom, there is not a soul in sight to see their side.

“Through irony might we see more deeply into the metaphor that is life, and in so seeing grow wiser, more joyful, humbler, and indeed, more compassionate?”

Yes indeed. In answering that question, ‘ll go back to what you quoted a while ago.

Shaahayda (With gratitude)