Grief is the Path
For about ten years, from a teenager into my early 20's, I was super pissed at just about everyone. I regularly said, "I don't like people."
I was so mad about the state of the world. I couldn't possibly be happy while there was SO MUCH wrong.
My working solution at the time was to be militantly vegan, scorn money, obsessively imagine the perfect circumstances in which I could one day be happy, and complain at length about not being there yet.
Of course, that strategy reaaaally didn't solve anything. It just made me miserable, along with everyone else around me, I'm sure.
Looking back, how I emerged from that time was a movement that came in waves.
One of the big waves was meeting a community of loving folks who welcomed me into their circle. They were present and authentic with each other, and I saw right away -- resentfully at first -- that they were having way more fun than me. Go figure!
It was in the focus of their genuine interest to know me that I started to feel the ocean of grief I had tried to lock away under a shield of anger.
Being received and loved by this community gave me faith in humanity.
Wait... I don't know that this experience gave me faith. I think I found faith.
I'm picking this apart as I write to you: I know faith as a steady flame that's absolute. Even when I lose hope -- and I do -- faith is always there. It's a force that feels like it can't be created or destroyed.
I can hope with all my heart for tyrannic leaders to fall from power; I can hope with every fiber of my being for justice, for healing, but these things may or may not come to pass. Where hope flounders, I have faith. I have faith in the light that resides in every heart, even in tyrants where - as far as I can perceive - that light is barely flickering, choked by pain.
I have faith in the pulse of life. I have faith in the power of love.
I don't think I was without faith when I was in my "I hate everything" period; I think I just didn't know how to find it. I didn't know that my ocean of grief could be a path like the Red Sea parting, leading me to salvation from despair.
The ocean is still inside me. In fact, I think it grows more vast every day. The waves wash up through me and leave my face salty and wet. I welcome the tides. They wash me free. They carry me back to faith: that deep, still expanse beneath the surface waves and seasonal currents.
There is so much that's wrong. There is so much beauty.
Feeling the full spectrum of this paradox is infinitely intense. It's serious work to FEEL. I lean on my community to do it. I rely on my practices to buoy me, and anchor me. I bring myself to what sparks joy in my heart.
Whatever it is that nourishes us most, we have to make THAT the center of our days; don't let it fall to the periphery.
I write this here for me too, because I know how easy it can be to fall out of rhythm with what sustains me.
In practice,
Muse