Only in our attempts to hold it all together (as if there were something TO hold together) do we run the risk of things falling apart. Only when we fool ourselves into thinking life can be tidy or that life plays by the rules do we, ourselves, end up fooled. There is no better defense, than no defense at all against life.
I say, let it all in. Swing your doors open. Let the shutters whack against their frames, hinges wild. There is no protecting against the life that will happen to you. There is no capturing the wind. We cannot tame life. We can only learn to ride.
I find myself, more often than I’d like, bracing myself against life. I feel myself pushing against some discomfort, some distant fear. I plan for a future that may never arrive. I plan my words and actions in order to avoid some future pain (which usually never arrives, I might add). I expend so much energy avoiding vulnerability. I press against the fact that I will die. I press against and drown out the fact that I, we all, are alone. Together, at times, yes. But in our most sacred places, sometimes very alone. I press agains the fact that I cannot, under any circumstances, prevent heartbreak. I cannot prevent the death of a loved one. I cannot keep all illness at bay forever. I can feel my body press against all of this like one, heavy, exhausted machine. I believe it collapses into itself and echoes for ages as one fear, and one fear standing alone, expressing itself in as many panicked ways as it can. We are afraid to die. And so, we are afraid to live. And in not living, we are closer to death than ever.
Unconsciously, we know that whatever has life, has death. I believe that it is this fear of death that keeps our lives as half-lives. We are afraid to loose what we gain, and so we never seek to gain. We never seek deep joy, deep reverence, deep love, deep ANYTHING. We are afraid to be full, because we are afraid to be empty. And in this fear, we are continually, half-starved hearts limping through a desert.
The well is vulnerability. The wet forest is opening to the wound. It is the softening into grief. It is singing out the sadness that grips our throats. The well is allowing ourselves to fall apart, to allow life in. Bit by bit, we can allow life in. It does not need to happen all at once. We can begin with one thing we are pressing against, something we are keeping underground that keeps pushing up the soil. Or we can soften into the overwhelming feeling that we are pressing against too much! Even that is something. Just whatever is here.
I’d like to plead with you here, because if you do it, we all benefit. When one person opens, even a crack of their shutter, we are all lighter for it. We are all more free. When one of us says ok yes, I’m going to die, so I am going to live now, then we are all more alive for it. If one heart, and then another, and then another, can allow this agonizing tenderness of being alive to wash over them and wail because it hurts so good, then we can begin to live while we are alive.
I am here. We are all here. And we are all in this together.
From my gushy heart to yours,
Nicole
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