Chapter 54: When suffering threatens to drown us
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My heart is breaking. There is so much suffering around us and within us these days, not one of us is unaffected.
2020 seems like one long, cruel, manipulative joke so far. With a divided nation, a pandemic, attack on civil liberties, and now violent rioting across the city I call home, my heart breaks.
This blog started as a therapeutic writing exercise for me to cope with a new diagnosis of malignant brain cancer, another of the many fabulously difficult gifts 2020 has given me. As the suffering keeps on coming; however, I find myself writing not only to process my own inner suffering, but in hopes that my words bring comfort to all of us suffering in our own unique and collective ways.
“No mud, no lotus,” says Thich Nhat Hanh. A few weeks ago, when my cancer went from low grade to aggressive and angry, I felt like the mud around me was so high I could hardly step through it. Now, I watch my home city burn to the ground and I find myself almost unable to comprehend what is happening in our world. Do any of you feel the same?
The mud is so high it is suffocating us all.
I wish I had a way to bring peace, justice, comfort, and safety to my home communities and all communities in the world. But, I am just one person. All I have to offer is my time, my love and compassion, my thoughts, and my words. I don’t know if they will make a difference, but I do know that saying nothing, offering no love or words, will not help anyone.
How do we survive in this life when the suffering overwhelms us? How do we continue to find the lotus flowers, the blossoms that grow from muddy, disturbing conditions to bring beauty to the darkness? How do we love and show compassion for everyone when we so vehemently disagree with the actions of some people in our world? How do we protect civil liberties, create equality, find happiness, forgive those who have harmed others, and hold onto our own values in the process?
Add to this list your own personal suffering – mental health crises, physical health crises, family turmoil, relationship changes, financial difficulties – and the mud becomes so high we may feel we are literally drowning in it.
“When you open yourself to the continually changing, impermanent, dynamic nature of your own being, and of reality, you increase your capacity to love and care about other people and your capacity to not be afraid.” Pema Chodron.
The Buddhist concept of impermanence is what keeps my mind at peace as the mud threatens to consume me. Everything is changing. Always changing. Change is difficult for us all. A diagnosis changed my health, my spirituality, my marriage, my career plans, my outlook on life. A pandemic changed our jobs, our schools, our communities. A hurtful act changed our sense of security, our sense of civic justice and harmony. An opportunistic group of rioters changed our peaceful city, our sense of safety, our fleeting sense of stability.
What then, can we count on to ground us, to pull us out of the never-ending mud as it continues to suck us in deeper?
Impermanence. This too shall pass. That will change. This will end. We will get through.
We may not be able to see or understand the why, the purpose, the cause or the effect right now; but days, months, years from now, we may look back on this year of chaos and see lotus blossoms growing tall from a muddy pile of rubble below.
Thank you for reading. I believe in equality for all, happiness for all, health for all, respect for all. When you feel yourself sinking in mud, I hope my words and my love can boost you up just enough to reach the ledge and pull yourself out. 2020, I hear you loud and clear, you crazy son of a **. We will get through this.
Fondly,
Courtney
©CB2020