There are many, many reasons why I enjoy camping, first among them is the simplicity of a broadened perspective. Like most of us I am often caught up in a fearful human internal diatribe around money and security and home and yadayadayada. I do my best to observe the nonsense and go on doing what needs to be done. However, when I am camping, life is simplified down to it's basic needs and I often exhale a huge sigh of relief when the mind stutters to a stop with the recognition... "So this is what I am so afraid of?" It is a wonderful internal comedy once we realize that in the absence of the turtle shell of worldly possesions life ain't so bad.
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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