A while back, I ran across this quote from the French poet Christian Bobin: “I was peeling a red apple from the garden when I suddenly understood that life would only ever give me a series of wonderfully insoluble problems. With that thought an ocean of profound peace entered my heart.”

I am sure the reason this quote struck me is its truth: being the mother of a disabled child guarantees a life full of insoluble problems.

I can’t say, however, that having this thought has led to profound peace. On the contrary, it sparks oppositional defiance in me: “Who says these problems have to be insoluble? Why are they insoluble? And if they are insoluble and they have to be insoluble, does that mean I just give up? And is ‘giving up’ what people mean when they say ‘acceptance’?”

And I can’t say that I would categorize the problems I encounter as “wonderfully insoluble.” Annoyingly insoluble, yes. Enragingly insoluble, you bet. But wonderfully?

As you can see, I am both captivated and infuriated by this quote, which suggests that Bobin is actually a pretty good poet, even though this is not a poem.

I think you must have to have a level of detachment from said problems to describe them this way, or perhaps have achieved a level of acceptance I have not yet ascended to.

But still I come back to this quote time and again and every time, I engage with it in a different way. Why a red apple? Was it juicy? Who peels apples before they eat them? Wouldn’t it be nice to have a garden to get apples from? How on earth does a poet afford the kind of house that comes with a garden that has an orchard?

I sometimes wonder if I’ve ever written anything that enrages and engages others in the same way. I certainly hope so.

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Jennifer Lawler has been a writer-editor for more than twenty-five years and has published more than forty novels and nonfiction books. She is the founder of the online education company Club Ed LLC.