Messy Everywhere...
and a bit of wise hope
“My soul tells me, we were all broken from the same nameless heart, and every living thing wakes with a piece of that original heart aching its way into blossom. This is why we know each other below our strangeness, why when we fall we lift each other, or when in pain we hold each other, why when sudden with joy we dance together. Life is the many pieces of that great heart, loving itself back together.” ~ Mark Nepo, The Exquisite Risk: Daring to Live an Authentic Life
There is so much going on these days, internally as well as externally, that I simply don’t know what to focus on, where to dive deeper, and how to write for this week. Plus, I am afraid of doing it. It feels too much, it seems that if I do decide to dive deeper - I will just drown in my own emotions, but won’t be able to articulate them through words, in a polished and fine manner (this, then, turns into a new fear, a fear of everyone else on this platform being better in writing that I am… ). This, often is my fear - that each time I try to express my feelings and thoughts, what comes out and in my writing is way less impactful than it sounds in my head and feels in my heart. So, instead, I choose consciously to skip writing and remain busy with something - anything - else. I know - I would be the first person to say that doing so isn’t all that skillful and that it prevents us from growing, but sometimes - in current times more than ever - it is much necessary and often the only way of self-preservation. So, I am keeping busy.
But then, I am not busy with work. As a matter of fact, I feel like not working at all. I am seeing a few of my regular clients, I seem not to be taking on many new ones, I spend hours in “planning” what I will be teaching soon and what kind of programs I am interested in bringing on, and I am overthinking about my website and all the changes it desperately needs, only to end up watching random movies and shows, or getting lost in a book and living vicariously through the main character. I walk Mala near the ocean every day, and I look at surfers and think to myself “why don’t you get out there, suit up and catch a wave”… Nah, it is way too uncomfortable, water is cold and you haven’t done it in so long that you’ll probably just drown and embarrass yourself. OK, how about making some new friends and joining them at a fire pit in the evening or for drinks and dinner. Hmmm… better not, I am not in a mood to have light conversations about upcoming Halloween parties, Thanksgiving dinners and Christmas plans. That all drives me the fuck insane right now (actually, it always did) and even more angry and irritable than I actually am. So, I don’t talk to people. I don’t engage much.
I have gone through a mild to medium case of UTI last week, which simply put me in one place and didn’t allow for a lot of movement and activity. There was no way I could have avoided but being connected to my body, feeling it inside out, whether I wanted it or not. And, as if the third world war isn’t in a near future (actually, wait, it might be happening as I am typing this), and as if that isn’t enough - I had my own shitty thoughts and fears to occupy myself with… Fuck, sometimes it is so painful being me. A loud battlefield in between my two ears… Oh, and I am avoiding news. I am avoiding conversations about news. I am avoiding ridiculous debates and holding sides, as if this is a sport event that we are all watching, cheering for one team, while sitting in a comfort of our homes, with a bottle of beer in our hands. I am avoiding expressing my not-so-popular opinion about the situation (at least not in the US). Shortly, I am avoiding life as much as I can. And then I somewhere stumbled upon this passage from the Journal of Sylvia Plath [1982, p. 67]… And, absolutely relating to it…
“… You have had chances; you have not taken them, you are wallowing in original sin; your limitations. You have lost all delight in life. You are becoming a neuter machine. You cannot love, even if you knew how to begin to love... You want to go home, back to the womb... You have forgotten the secret you knew, of being joyous, of laughing, of opening doors”.
With running a risk of being completely misunderstood and even misjudged, I will say that I can softly, maybe, just somewhat, imagine and sense how someone without a land, a territory to settle and build a home, family, and community, while being judged and ostracized from global society continuously, might feel. And not only without a land and ungrounded, unsettled, but also affected by extremely rough, inhumane conditions, for decades. As someone who often deeply feels and identifies as a “girl from nowhere”, and additionally someone who knows from personal experience how it feels to be powerless to the world’s popular opinions and horrific political regimens and decisions - I can surely relate, to a very minimal extend - to what it might feel to not only fear for your own life, but also not belong, and feel like an outsider everywhere. I have heard recently this beautiful differentiation between empathy and compassion - empathy would speak “I feel with you” whereas compassion would say “I am moved by you”. This speaks to my heart very much. I am very much moved by you and your people, Palestine. After all, regardless of our personal circumstances, our own histories and life events, I am sure most of us have felt like “a motherless child” at least on few occasions.
I have been traveling out of a suitcase (literally) for the last six years. I have lived without my own home, staying in various places very briefly (sometimes as brief as 4 nights or one week), only to be moving to another place almost right away. Before that, for years I have lived in various cities and changed homes and locations often. At this point in my life, everything I own would fit in 2-3 suitcases… except that there are books… many, many books… that I don’t know where I would fit. Obviously, I can’t travel with them. And I have my furry girl, Mala. That’s all. That is all my belongings. All my “assets”. I have managed, finally, to collect all my stuff in one place after having them spread out on two, sometimes three, continents - and currently that is my parents’ house in Novi Sad, Serbia. Actually, to be more precise, a place where my father currently resides.
It’s interesting… living this lifestyle. On one hand it is so freeing and liberating, daily forcing me to inevitably practice non-attachment to any and all material things. There is no such thing as acquiring things, collecting them, and keeping them for the sake of filling out space (that I don’t have, anyways) or a thought that maybe in the future I will get to do something with them. There is no space to hold onto old memories, there is only a (short-term) space for making and storing new ones. And this can make you very practical in the end, often very cerebral. It can also be sad at times, as this practice of non-attachment translates to people and relationships too, and sometimes we do feel attached or we want to be a bit attached to others. Sometimes this makes me feel a bit cold, maybe overly detached from the world around me. There is no perfection anyways… Your life is what you make out of it. And, this is my life, the only life I know. It is not good or bad, it just is.
Admittedly, I have chosen this lifestyle, and I keep on choosing it every day. It wasn’t forced upon me in any way, and it did not just happen to me. I never know with clarity and certainty what the next thing in my life is going to be. And living it, it feels like I am often in an uncharted territory, and feeling my way through the dark. And, this can be exciting, as well as exhausting. I am recognizing that I just might be a bit tired at this point. There is a lack of that sense of being grounded, being settled I feel is missing. Additionally, there is a daily financial insecurity and uncertainty, too. But, all of this is doable and manageable for me. One thing, however, that I miss the most these days is the community, a sense of connection and belonging, shared time, space, values, and practices. And, as much as I love to be on my own, I also like (and need) to be part of something that is valuable and dear to me - something that is bigger than me. But, you can’t have a community if you don’t stay someplace long enough to join one, or create a new one and put some effort in maintaining it. It requires one’s commitment, regularly showing up. And, I seem to not have been able to provide that in the past. Not yet. But who knows what’s coming… And, again, Sylvia Plath touches upon these things so well for me in her own wondrous words…
“… Putting up pretty artificial statues. I can’t get outside myself. [Kukil, 2000, p. 314] “The Idea of a life gets in the way of my life.” [p. 315]
“The day is an accusation.” [p. 470] “What I fear worst is failure, and this is stopping me from trying...” [p. 471]
“Something freezes me from my reap spirit: is it fear of failure, fear of being vulnerable?” [p. 476]
“I fear for the meaning and purpose of my life” [p. 525].
And then, at the end of the day, I think “well, none of this really matters”. And I don’t mean it in a spiritual bypassing way where I am just so high on life non stop, or in a way where I am so “blessed” with my life so that I don’t notice and instead avoid how fucked up and painful it may be at times… No, I don’t mean it like that. What I mean is - none of this really matters in the grand scheme of things. Life is so much larger and complex than my finances, my fears of failure, and my personal moods, irritabilities, intimacy issues, and certainly my small petty, and often, first world problems. I mean, fuck, just this morning while walking Mala I passed by a homeless man in a wheelchair who looked like he may have been dead. It’s that fragility of life. It’s that notion of how life is ever changing. It’s that notion of “I am suffering with you” and “I am moved by you”. If you’re lucky, life events and memories are replacing each other so quickly, it is almost difficult to follow. If you’re lucky, one moment you are miserable and clingy, and the very next one you are feeling joy and fulfillment. One day you have a job, and your savings, and your 401k, and the very next day you are sick and dying, and nothing else matters. For most of us, what was important one day, is already forgotten the next day. Sadly, this frame of mind carries on to the world news and people’s lives globally, and with a new conflict arising (to be precise, not new at all, if anything one of the oldest still unresolved conflicts in the world) most of us have already forgotten about the “old” one (that is still going on, remember Ukraine?!). There are people out there who unfortunately don’t have a privilege of even pausing for one second to take a breath and look around to find some, even the smallest moment of beauty. I am sure that if us, who have the privilege of being at least safe and sheltered, just pause for one moment and try to really grasp this, there is no way we will be able to feel anything but deep sadness in our hearts. There is no way that we won’t be moved by all this… I don’t know… I personally feel that I belong here one minute, and the very next moment it all feels like a dream and so alien to me, I just want to dissolve and disappear…
All of this doesn't mean that nothing matters so we should all go kill ourselves, go live in a cave in the middle of nowhere, or party like there is no tomorrow. It just means that whenever we are struggling so much in our own little shells, unable to look up and around us, when we are feeling small and irrelevant and insecure, or when we are feeling disconnected from everyone and everything else - it is like this now… It is like this now… This moment shall pass. It always does. Something else will arise. What helps, undoubtedly, is someone close and dear to us to remind us of all this in difficult times. A family member, a friend, often a neighbor, but sometimes even just a knowing that somewhere in the world, far away from us, there are people who feel the same. And, often, even worse. Much worse. What comes to mind is the Native people’s expression “Mitakuye Oyasin” that translates to “to all my relations”. What this means is that we are all related. It is an acknowledgement that everything is connected - from people to plants and animals. On a deeper level, it means that everything in our universe is interconnected. So, when you suffer, I share your suffering with you, I am moved by your suffering.
I have heard recently a talk by a renowned Buddhist teacher Roshi Joan Halifax, where she spoke about socially engaged Buddhism and how taking care of all beings equally is important. She mentioned how the Buddha was a social activist. Even though he had a great life in the palace, he left this life - along with the loved ones - and with that, he rejected a cast society. He shows us that we have to take care of all beings equally, not only those who are our own blood or family, those who look like us or come from the same background, and certainly not only the leaders of the pack. As a social reformer, he certainly inspired, and keeps inspiring, many of us.
We, regular, lay people, often speak about hope. Buddhists, however, often consider hope to be the adversary. If you are familiar with the Buddhist teachings, you have probably heard that everything around us is interdependent, and influenced by our own thoughts and actions, our karmic seeds. It may sound like there is not much room for hope here. And the reality is that there are so many situations that are hopeless in the world (more and more so). And, in the end, we show up for no other reason but because of the hope. In the common view of hope, there is some fear present - fear that things might not end well or the way we want them to end. But, when you think about it - most things we don’t decide to do because we hope they will turn out well - we do them simply because they are the right thing to do. Halifax calls this concept a “wise hope” - hope that is enriched with that sense of doing things because it is the right thing to do. According to Buddhism, we do this while also being aware of the unavoidable impermanence of all things - the simple fact that nothing lasts forever and things are constantly changing - as well as with the understanding and acceptance that things will turn out a certain way no matter how we want them to be and how attached we might be to a certain outcome. Wise hope. I dig it. And I wish to keep on seeing how it plays out in my life. Cause, in the end, life is always exactly where we are.
“Sometimes I feel like a motherless child,
Sometimes I feel like a motherless child,
Sometimes I feel like a motherless child,
A long way from home.
A long way from home.Sometimes I feel like I'm almost done,
Sometimes I feel like I'm almost done,
Sometimes I feel like I'm almost done,
A long way from home.
A long way from home.Sometimes I feel like I'm a true believer,
Sometimes I feel like I'm a true believer,
Sometimes I feel like I'm a true believer,
A long way from home.
A long way from home.”~ Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child, African American spiritual, early 1800s