How do we keep our hearts open?
I know we’re all trying to live our lives as best we can. But beneath all our efforts to be good people doing good things, sometimes the suffering and loss in the world catches up to us.
What had begun as a soft morning for me, full of gratitude and small pleasures, became a descent into sadness and a deep longing for an earlier time when suffering and death didn’t seem to be knocking down my door.
At first I thought it was because I’d read the newspaper headlines. I rarely do that, especially in the morning. But really, that came after I discovered the tiny scattered feathers beneath the bird feeder after a hawk strike.
Afterwards, I walked the property only to discover several trees had come down, either from beavers or high winds or simply old age. What had been home for the birds and other creatures was now a tangle of broken trunks and branches.
I couldn’t stop the feelings from carving a hole in my stomach and bringing tears to my eyes. Usually I’ll start writing or make something with my hands. But today, those feelings pressed down on me like a vice. I just sat at my desk. I didn’t know what to do.
I found myself thinking about Thich Nhat Hanh, the Vietnamese buddhist monk who suffered through the bombing of his country. Although my circumstances were far, far from his, my question was essentially his:
How do I stay open to the suffering of the world, as well as my own without letting it close my own heart?
This is what I’ve learned: If we don’t find a way to transmute our difficult feelings, they’ll spill out into our lives in ways we regret, pulling us away from presence and from our own humanity.
Thich Nhat Hanh was insistent on understanding difficult feelings - not to erase them but to keep them from becoming the ground on which we stand. And there are many other wise teachers who shared a similar perspective, many of whom you’re already familiar: Viktor Frankl, Pema Chodron, and Nelson Mandela.
What they share is this: instead of turning away from the world, they became more engaged in protecting and committing to acts of kindness, compassion and beauty.
This is not denial. It’s not optimism, which insists that things will work out. Rather, it’s hope in its purest form. This is where I find inspiration from Vaclav Havel:
"Hope is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something is worth doing regardless of how it turns out.”
No doubt tomorrow there will be more signs of loss and suffering. But there will also be another opportunity to meet the world with the kind of presence I hope to embody.
What had begun as a soft morning for me, full of gratitude and small pleasures, became a descent into sadness and a deep longing for an earlier time when suffering and death didn’t seem to be knocking down my door.
At first I thought it was because I’d read the newspaper headlines. I rarely do that, especially in the morning. But really, that came after I discovered the tiny scattered feathers beneath the bird feeder after a hawk strike.
Afterwards, I walked the property only to discover several trees had come down, either from beavers or high winds or simply old age. What had been home for the birds and other creatures was now a tangle of broken trunks and branches.
I couldn’t stop the feelings from carving a hole in my stomach and bringing tears to my eyes. Usually I’ll start writing or make something with my hands. But today, those feelings pressed down on me like a vice. I just sat at my desk. I didn’t know what to do.
I found myself thinking about Thich Nhat Hanh, the Vietnamese buddhist monk who suffered through the bombing of his country. Although my circumstances were far, far from his, my question was essentially his:
How do I stay open to the suffering of the world, as well as my own without letting it close my own heart?
This is what I’ve learned: If we don’t find a way to transmute our difficult feelings, they’ll spill out into our lives in ways we regret, pulling us away from presence and from our own humanity.
Thich Nhat Hanh was insistent on understanding difficult feelings - not to erase them but to keep them from becoming the ground on which we stand. And there are many other wise teachers who shared a similar perspective, many of whom you’re already familiar: Viktor Frankl, Pema Chodron, and Nelson Mandela.
What they share is this: instead of turning away from the world, they became more engaged in protecting and committing to acts of kindness, compassion and beauty.
This is not denial. It’s not optimism, which insists that things will work out. Rather, it’s hope in its purest form. This is where I find inspiration from Vaclav Havel:
"Hope is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something is worth doing regardless of how it turns out.”
No doubt tomorrow there will be more signs of loss and suffering. But there will also be another opportunity to meet the world with the kind of presence I hope to embody.