And here's the thing - the sadness I feel isn't ubiquitous (not anymore). It doesn't flood every facet of my being and drown my soul. There are times in life when sadness does just that - and that is okay, too. But this is not one of those times. This time sadness is just there - sitting in the room, strongly requesting my attention. I can either turn away from it or attend to it. The choice is mine. The turn toward is a turn toward myself - a conciliatory act of self-love and acceptance. An affirmation of the thought that I am enough - all of me. Including my grief, loss and pain. And now, as I sit to type these words, I begin to realize that I have been treating sadness as a person I hoped - if I were nice enough to him - would go away. Sort of a nuisance that you can't get rid of aggressively, and so it might help to become friends with him so that he will eventually leave you be and never come around again. But that's all wrong. Sadness isn't something outside of me - it's a part of my internal journey of transformation and becoming. The goal isn't to befriend it so that it will go away. The goal is to befriend it because it is an expression of my deepest self. Just as joy and love also are. The "goal" (if that is even a valuable word in this context) is to embrace my sadness because it's there... because it isn't going away. And when I run away from it, it becomes a neurotic and consuming type of sadness. The heavy blanket I referenced in an earlier post. It sits on me as a kind of depression, or haunts me as a dissociated ghost aspect of myself. I stop being whole because I am walking in the wrong direction. I am reminded of a line from Andrea Gibson: we have all dug too many trenches away from ourselves.
And I am ready to be done digging trenches away from myself. I thought I could embrace sadness in one brief (several year) span of my life and then figure out how to be done with it. I wanted to learn my "sadness lesson." Well my sadness lesson is that sadness is part of life's fabric. Like the out breath. Like the sinking of the tide. There is no befriending it until it goes away - there is only the turning toward it each time it arises. Knowing that it is not a threat. Going into it so that it loses its grip of fear and suffocation on my life. And that's the beauty. Because when I am not frightened by my sadness, I am less likely to be frightened by the sadness of others. When I begin to see how sadness loses its stranglehold when the light of compassionate awareness shines upon it, I begin to offer others this gift of presence as well. It is an awful thing to live in fear of oneself. It is an awful thing to constantly exert energy digging trenches away from oneself. Because then, wherever I go, I'm not there. I'm somewhere else - running and hiding from myself. And when I am there - when I truly turn and go into the sadness - I see that it is not all that there is. There is such joy and love and beauty and hope. And when I'm not looking for ways or people who can help me walk around my sadness, I am actually present to myself, my experiences, and my life. I can touch the world. Which is scary sometimes... because the world is big and unpredictable and wild. But it's also where the perfect moments are. The sunrises, the flowers, the grass. Children's smiles and the wisdom of those who have spent their lives turning toward instead of turning away. In Buddhist terms, we only find Nirvana when we turn into Samsara. When we look square upon it and go into it. To see it's true nature. To see it lose its grip upon us. Or TS Eliot:
"only in time can the moment in the rose-garden,
The moment in the arbour where the rain beat,
The moment in the draughty church at smokefall
Be remembered; involved with past and future.
Only through time time is conquered."
Sadness isn't that friend who I can get to go away if I'm nice to him for awhile. Sadness is a part of myself that will always be there, sometimes more, sometimes less. And the point of becoming friends with it is not some manipulative tactic to construct some idealistic post-sadness life. It is so that I can become more human, and learn to walk through a world in which there is both sadness and joy. Laughter and tears.
And that, I think, is what this journey is really about. Touching our truth deeply. Seeing ourselves clearly. Not running away, but turning toward. Embracing. So that we can help others embrace as well. Maybe there's something here that the world needs to hear - because something has to bring us out of this vortex of violence that we're descending into. Some way of navigating our internal fears, and projections, and neuroses, and psychoses. Some path back to ourselves.
I want to end with a poem by my beloved teacher, Thich Nhat Hanh, who is in a hospital in France recovering from a brain hemorrhage suffered many weeks ago. It is called "Message."
But I have become a child again this morning.
The smile, seen through leaves and flowers,
is beck to smooth away the wrinkles,
as the rains wipe away footprints on the beach.
Again a cycle of birth and death begins.
I walk on thorns, but firmly, as among flowers.
I keep my head high.
Rhymes bloom among the sounds of bombs and mortars.
The tears I shed yesterday have become rain.
I feel calm hearing its sound on the thatched roof.
Childhood, my birthland, is calling me,
and the rains melt my despair.
I am still here alive, able to smile quietly.
O sweet fruit brought forth by the tree of suffering!
Carrying the dead body of my brother,
I go across the rice field in the darkness.
Earth will keep you tight within her arms, my dear,
so that tomorrow you will be reborn as flowers,
those flowers smiling quietly in the morning field.
This moment you weep no more, my dear.
We have gone through too deep a night.
This morning,
I kneel down on the grass,
when I notice your presence.
Flowers that carry the marvelous smile of ineffability
speak to me in silence.
The message,
the message of love
and understanding,
has indeed come to us.
(From Call Me By My True Names, by Thich Nhat Hanh)
