Is It Even Despair Anymore?

I want to continue to share this wild experience I am having in this season of my life, as I did last week. I’m finding it difficult because of how audacious (risky?!) it feels to describe what and where is not suffering in my life.

I used to think, if you’re not suffering, you’re not awake. As in, if you look around at what is happening in the world, and you don’t feel devastated, what the hell is going on?! And lately when I do look around, I do feel devastated sometimes. A difference in this current season is I don’t miss how special and alive the devastation is. How vibrant it is to notice the world, to pay attention, how gorgeous and bright and full it is to pay attention. I feel the aliveness of devastation. This is what is blowing me away lately: it’s possible to feel amazing while feeling difficult emotions. But only if I’m completely with them, as in accepting them. They transform into not-difficult emotions. And in that process, while it’s happening — as I’m feeling it and loving the feeling itself — it shifts into something I’m not sure is called devastation anymore.

This morning I was waiting at the DMV to get a new license. I was waiting in line, marveling at trees growing in between apartment buildings and people on their morning runs and commutes. The dignity and beauty of every life form! There was a toddler playing with a hot wheels car, and I was the only one not looking at my phone, so we made eye contact a couple times and I got to marvel at his brightness, existing there. In the past I probably would have been depressed by everyone else looking at their phones. Just so no one gets any ideas, I did look at my phone while standing in that line, just not continuously. I marveled at the friendship that was palpable between DMV workers who opened the door for each other as they trickled into the building, needing to keep it locked so no one would come in before they opened. In the past I would have been depressed while imagining how hard their jobs must be. It’s not that I don’t still imagine how hard their jobs must be, but it’s not the only thing I’m seeing. I’m also seeing how it looks like they take care of each other. In that way that difficult circumstances bring out deeper connections in people.

I heard the mom of the toddler talk to him in a very harsh way, and I felt despair rise up in me. I was sort of surprised by it, because it hasn’t been so frequent lately, so I notice it right away when it arises. Something I felt was uncomfortable, and then I realized I was efforting to make it the despair go away. My mind was summarizing instead of being in the moment: “I’m in this state lately, what is despair doing here?”

Again, I forgot the truth! It happens all the time! But then, because I noticed this feeling of something not being “right,” I remembered: oh! I’m here for any (ANY) emotion that comes through. How precious and sacred to feel despair at the way this mom is talking to this kid. How many times I’ve been that mom. How many times I probably will be in the future. How many times I’ve been that kid. Despair is here! All I have to do is remember it’s welcome. So then it’s welcome.

And this is what I still don’t know how to describe, because I don’t know what happens to the despair. It’s not gone, but it’s smaller, maybe? Smaller than the connection I feel to that child, and that mom, to all of the moments all of us have felt overwhelmed by our relationships, caregiving, living, and how that has erupted into terribleness to people we love. Somehow the connection to that fellowship outshines the despair.

Thought is energy. So then I think about the difference of the energetics between my judgment of this beloved mom in the line, and my acceptance of her. And what that feels like — would feel like — if everyone in that line is accepting, understanding, remembering they too have been there, in that exact harsh place. What does that feel like for that mom? What does that feel like for all of us to be waiting in that kind of line?

I’m sharing this experience as something that looks small, maybe. But the implications in my life, in our lives, feel so large to me. Attending to my own emotions, tracking them with loving precise attention, leads to a very different way of me showing up to life.

At this point it’s clear for me that it’s my number one job. I feel no doubt about it (!!!???!!!). For the rest of my life. Is to give loving attention to the state of my psyche, in every moment. It’s my life purpose. On the surface, to my egoic mind, this can sound like selfishness. But I am infinitely more full of love and presence toward others when I do my number one job with commitment. It also seems like when I write that life purpose, that it would take a lot of time, it would take forever. It actually takes almost no time, because it only happens in the present! Hahahahaha. I’m laughing but I’m not joking. It can only happen right now.

I have plenty of other purposes, of course. But they are secondary to this cultivation of present moment awareness because I am the most nonharming to this planet earth and all us bodies who constitute it when I do this. I don’t feel doubt about that now, because the effects are so dramatic and so clear to me. I feel surprising clarity, in fact! Hahahahaha

I find it difficult to interpret or imagine how my writing comes across these days. It’s so emergent, what is happening. But this is what I’ve got for today, and I pray it may be of use to you in some way!