What if it comes down to us?

No video this week, my loves. My eyeballs have been leaking too much in the last week to try to get through this topic on camera. What I can do, however, is write it out, or at least try. 

My heart is broken for this country. For people dying trying to celebrate a joyous holiday, driving to their mom's house, and just going about their lives. We are so clearly not ok. 

I've recently learned the term "deaths of despair," which is frequently and unsurprisingly used in a racialized manner that downplays the impact on marginalized populations. But the term really hit home with me. Despair can be the only explanation for our harming one another and ourselves these days. Despair is why we have lost sight of hope, missed the signs of our interdependence, chosen violence and aggression over love and gentleness.

Despair is the natural response when we seem to choose not to take care of one another, when we fail to connect with one another in meaningful ways, when we are run down, burned out, overwhelmed, under-appreciated, under-paid, under-supported, under-slept, underfed.

When I feel despair, reading the news doesn't do me any good. It only feeds my sense of hopelessness. I never did develop the ability to have a stiff upper lip so that's no option. I can't force myself to carry on as if everything is normal. It's not. What I have learned - from age, from motherhood, from meditation, from my teachers - is instead to let my heart break. Just let it break wide open and feel that searing, raw ache. Let it in and let it out. Listen to the music that draws it out, read the things that validate it, let the tears come. I hate it too, but I have come to recognize it as the only trustworthy way - the only honest and sane way - to deal with despair. 

This is how I felt yesterday as I sat in an "ultrasound suite" waiting for the results of some tests. I sat there in the dim light - they mercifully lit little LED lights instead of the blaring fluorescent ones - and resisted the urge to pull out my phone and disconnect. I noticed, someone had taken the time to string those little LED lights under the cabinets because it changed the feel of the room. They also placed some in a ball jar on the counter and hung some quotes on the wall, sayings like "Don't forget to leave room to dream" and "Hope is that thing with feathers..." The ultrasound tech called me "my love," let me know what to expect, and helped me feel as comfortable as possible. Her physical presence echoed the thoughtful little details around the room - medical, yes, but warm, personal too. 

As I got dressed to leave I noticed a wallet-sized photo of a woman by the door. "In memory" it said. A sister? Aunt? Friend? Someone loved by the tech. Someone missed and not forgotten. I wondered, is there a connection between the grief she surely felt for this person and the love she bestowed on me, the care she bestows on every woman who comes into her suite? Did she feel despair at some point and is the way she shows up in the world now touched by that?

I felt differently leaving the medical center. Not healed, not happy, but aware, curious. Maybe a little hopeful that the efforts and actions of one person had touched me. Could something so simple be meaningful? Could it be THE thing? 

I came home and was reading the end of Welcoming the Unwelcome by Pema Chodron. In my despair, I have a stack of half-read books on my nightstand and this was one of them - I "forget" how much I love and need to read. But having started the Intuitive Eating for Life community and committing and recommitting every day to the connection between a meditation practice and an Intuitive Eating practice - not to mention the more existential practice of waking up in our real lives - I vowed to finish this book this week. In a chapter called "Learning from Our Teachers," I read:

"The teacher helps you wake up by mirroring both your shortcomings and your basic goodness. He or she shows you both the neuroses you didn't want to look at and the potential that you didn't know was there. But once you've started getting familiar with these aspects of your mind and have acquired a taste to see more and more, the whole world opens up to you as your teacher. This is called 'finding the universal teacher,' the teacher in the phenomenal world."

I feel very lucky to find that I have teachers everywhere, the ultrasound tech, my meditation instructor, my mentors and colleagues, my child, my body, you all. Even those who have committed heinous crimes in the last few weeks, or throughout time. These are my teachers as well. In their despair they forget that by harming others they are literally - not just figuratively - harming themselves. In my own despair, I will look to those who have let their hearts break and have transformed that pain into caring for others. And that matters more than any of us can imagine. 

So, what if that's it and it comes down to us? It's worth contemplating.