I grasp at joy and avoid sadness. It's not unique to me. It is the human condition. We cling to imagined good and resist the uncomfortable. I sit here, packing my belongings again, my heart aching at the prospect of leaving my mountain. I sit not knowing. I look out at a misty horizon, uncertain. Where will we live? Can I afford a house? How will I support the boys? What is all of this about? Will I know/experience love? These questions rise and fall. When I try to answer each one, my body constricts in fearful response. In its somatic wisdom it whispers the simple truth, I don't know. The mind is unsatisfied with not knowing and worry is born. The truth remains. I don't know. And so instead of "taking thought", I wrap my arms around myself and feel. Sadness. Loneliness. Joy. Hopefulness. Fear. Regret. Longing. Doubt. All of it. When there is nothing left to resist, what remains? Life.
Grief is defined as a deep or intense sorrow. I have been thinking a lot about grief, about it's wide and sticky reach, about the watery quality of it's absorption and the agonizing effort of swimming to shore. Intense sorrow happens. It is a part of life. Yet we press against it. We try to eradicate it. How? We encapsulate our grief in a story, thus effectively removing us from the immediacy of the pain. The mind promises salvation and begins to tell a story, over and over and over. We listen to the inner ramblings, the constant diatribe, the neurotic attempt to avoid the experience. When someone is hurting we listen to their story, we talk about it, we recount our own story, but we certainly don't jump in the waters of sadness, instead we sit on the bank of our familiar longing. Once, when I was floundering in deep grief, my youngest brother knelt next to me and held me for over an hour. He didn't speak. He didn't commiserate. He just jumped in the
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