I was in our local hospital emergency room the other night. I was comforting my 10 year old daughter awaiting a surgical repair to her broken and dislocated arm. All the rooms were full with some degree of trauma and pain. This is not exceptional, emergency room visits occur over 114 million times a year in the United States alone. We live in a world with gravity, as my ten year old experienced with her recent bad landing on an unfortunate trampoline bounce. At some time or another we all miss and fall, and the force of gravity bears on us all equally, where we hit the ground- but we’re not running.

The other gravity of life takes hold at these moments that often usher in serious injury and grave tragedy. We are never prepared for the end of anything, even if we are fully aware of the statistics and uncertainty that qualify life. How could we go about the fullness of life’s activities and challenges expecting tragedy to fall with the even handedness that the universal law of gravity metes out? In order to keep it all going, we move forward with the naive expectation that the difficult and challenging experiences in life only happen to other people, not to us. Sooner or later, even the luckiest among us joins the ranks of survivors.

I had just started reading I Will Not Be Broken by Jerry White, the day before I spent the night in the emergency room. I have suffered illnesses and diseases with my children before, some that seemed like they would define life forever. I remembered his words about how when people suffer a major loss of any kind, they all carry a date. This is the moment when tragedy, loss and surviving transforms their lives. As I sat in the ICU waiting room, hearing hushed conversations around me, I knew that some of that date setting was going on right there. I felt so grateful that all I had in front of me in the middle of the night is getting a girl through summer without the pool.

That is another phenomenon of tragedy that happens for most of us. We often end up comparing our loss to those of others we know or have heard of. Even in the most dire of circumstances, survivors find gratitude; their problem is manageable compared to people they know. Jerry White, himself was the victim of life changing loss when early in his twenties, he lost his lower leg in a minefield outside of Jerusalem. His book is an account of the years he has spent founding the Survivors Corp and shares the gravity and grief of daily life on planet earth along with remarkable stories of resiliency.

Tragedy and loss is not limited to bodily events, the emotional wreckage that can result from dysfunctional relationships is no less an issue of survivor-ship than losing a limb as I was recently reminded from one of my readers. She asked me to write of the loss and trauma of reinventing a life after being left and abandoned in her long term relationship. I hear these kinds of stories everyday, where the heart can become so bruised that we become unable to feel, unable to risk expressing love, isolated with our fears and loneliness. Finding the courage and the heart to rebuild a life that has meaning and brings joy requires the same skills of survivor-ship which begin by giving up being a victim and choosing life.

The universal law of gravity is based on the fundamental force of attraction between bodies (objects of mass) which is what gravity in life should teach us. We are all in this together and reacting to the losses that we sustain with the ability to reach out and give back is the basis on which we not only survive, but thrive. Often it is not until the world seems to be coming apart that we begin to feel both compassion and connectedness to people, both that we know and that are strangers who have experienced a loss like ours.

Early stages of recovery from tragedy happen as we lose our sense of being a victim and realize that we belong. Joining groups of people who share similar experiences is a profoundly healthy response to finding meaning in your own experience. Settling into a new and different life experience is heightened and more rewarding when we risk offering our help to others just beginning their journey.

Experiencing our brokenness is where we get a heart that is cracked wide open. A heart that has the both the strength to grieve, the courage to forgive, the tenacity to live in gravity.

We can catch someone else’s feelings with the same speed as we can catch a cold from them. We live in an invisible emotional economy where the moods of the people around you – good and bad become the basis of the emotional transactions of your day. A day full of people who are optimistic and happy is likely going to be remembered as a good day, just as a day with more than one conflict or stressful situation can easily be marked off as another bad day. This is the emotional economy of our lives and while we all have different degrees of impact, the people we encounter and surround ourselves with, profoundly influence whether you are living in a rich or desolate emotional landscape.

For sure, some people are more susceptible than others- my husband the psychiatrist is, thankfully, professionally trained to keep his distance, but still, it isn’t hard to imagine the toll of a long day of very sad people walking through your office. I, on the other hand, am it seems to me at times, entirely porous. Daily experiences or even the swinging moods of my children who cover the full range of of adolescent experiences keep me bobbing up and down like a buoy in turbulent waters.

Regardless of how open you are to other people’s moods, it is helpful to realize that our emotional economy is affecting more than only our mood. Our experience of our days shapes how we feel about our lives and has a very real impact on our health and the potential success we bring to almost any venture. Choosing wisely the relationships we can sustain in a positive and loving way and clearing out the relationships that have no upside is perhaps the single most significant step you can take to living in a healthy emotional economy, which is the foundation for all the rest.

…You see things as you are.” This quote from the Talmud reflects truly how we live. Our filters of life events are always clouded by how we feel, what we are thinking, how we are judging in that moment. What is the objective view? We use scientific models of double blind studies as a standard, but how in our daily lives and relationships can we see beyond ourselves?

This is a question worth asking over and over again, because our relationships are impacted continuously by how we see ourselves. Recently I have been feeling anxious. It was more than a situational reaction, but less than some anxiety disorders that I know many people suffer from. It was like walking around in a dark cloud. And here in the northwest, there were plenty of dark clouds to accommodate my mood. The point of the story was that I tried to just stand watch and not go with the storyline, but the truth was that the feelings moving through me created everything I saw. The synaptic space between my anxiety and my worthlessness lived within the same impulse.

Thankfully I am beyond the place of blame. I no longer wait for someone else to cure my moods and I try not to hold my family hostage with them but they see the moods, or feel them as I move clumsily through the motions of meals and laundry and driving from event to event.

Here is the only answer I could come up with during these days of restlessness and fear. Look for the smallest sensory things that are true. Experience the world through the body- The changing color of leaves, the crisp scent in the air, the chill of the wind. Keep the interactions with the people you love brief and don’t believe you are not loved, just because you can’t love yourself.

The sun was shining on me all weekend, maybe I was just short on Vitamin D, but I can’t put into words just how healing the hours on a warm sunny beach were to my soul. This is a small miracle on the Oregon coast. You never know what you will get in the little micro climate we call beach, but when it is glorious- wind free, sunny days- you take it as a blessing.

That and slowing down the pace enough to actually find the moment and suddenly the burden of family and growing children was a gift, the entire lens shifted and I could see through grateful eyes. That is the prayer answered, the moments when we can see our lives as the gift that they are. I would like to believe that I could have come to that place had the overcast skies never broken, but I know myself. It would have been too easy to keep wishing for what I didn’t have, lamenting how life wasn’t exactly how I wanted it.

You’d think we would grow out of that useless behavior by now. I have read enough meditation texts that I know deeply the waste of time my energy fuels with the discontented longing for some other way. It is just a short trip from there to a tiny thought fueling a fast spiral into some familiar resentment. I have spent way too much of the last few months battling back to eventide.

So thank you to the sun, to the ocean roaring in and going out, to the warm soft sand under my feet. Thank you to a world which was just as I had wished it, so that I can remember how beautiful life can be- whether it is to my specifications or not.

I read about the recently disclosed letters of Mother Teresa during this coming to the light of mine and tried to imagine a woman who brought light and hope to millions of people during her lifetime, who agonized about her own personal connection to God. Was it a mask as she claimed in her darker moments, the smile and comfort that touched so many lives, or did she just not get that each of those connections was her being loved by God.

They referred to her 50 some years of searching as a crisis in faith, but I am not sure if I would agree, it might have actually been her triumph of faith that allowed her to make her ministry one of the great forces of love in history. It feels like a deep lesson to me, the girl who is always touting the power to sustain- you don’t have to feel connected to do the work of connecting. Love is love whether we feel it or not. Believing in it, acting for it even when we most long for it- might be all we get- and every now and again- the sun is shining on us.

With love, your neighborhood loveologist.

A finer description of the state of humanity would be hard to come by or feel more true for my life situation of late. The question of biology and hormonal influences have to come up because it is hard to justify the feelings of exhaustion and despair that can just wash over me. The Buddhists call this shengpa, this ineffable experience of feelings that turn into solid reality in our thoughts and hook us away from even the most mundane experiences. It is hard to concentrate even on getting dinner made.

There are other moments, just as lucid, that are filled with calm certainty and a lightheartedness that comes from surrender. Not really giving up, but allowing. What a delight to be present in these moments but like late summer afternoons, they are fleeting.

It takes concentrated effort not to let this determine the course of my relationships. Many days it is easy to blame the relationships for the feelings. Then I do a disservice to both my feelings and the people I love the most. Don’t get me wrong it is easier than sliding down a slippery hill in early morning frost to feel certain that if the relationships were more __________ (fill in the blank), the feelings would not come storming in.

So all there is to do is learn to watch our thoughts, experience the brief storms and let them pass on over trying not to leave a trace. Much more challenging than it sounds. Either words of wisdom or meaningless babble from your neighborhood loveologist.

In case you didn’t know that we were in the prime of shooting star season- take this as a friendly reminder to go and lay out under the stars with someone you love. Romantic, platonic, family or friends- laying still under a big sky of stars and waiting for a moment of magic is life changing, even if only for the minute you are fully present. This is the perfect venue for wishes as well. Although having a wish at the ready when your heart is full of wonder about the flashing stars sending messages from light years away is surprisingly more challenging than you might think.

My littlest daughter gave me the secret last night- you have to keep the wish close to your heart, in your mind all the time- so it is already there when the star comes to meet it. This advice I think could be applied to many situations and is at the heart of what you hope for in meditation. That stillness, unfocused focus so that the present moment is all there is.

Happiness has not been easy to find lately and so mostly that has been my wish- just to feel happy. I think I must have had it there long enough for a star to get it, because lying out on the roof with my children under the vast sky of stars gave me the gift of presence and I was happy. The stars will be shooting for a couple of nights yet so find a moment and make a wish and hold it long enough for a star to find you.

A star watching tip from your neighborhood loveologist.

No, no, there is no going back.
Less and less you are that possibility you were.
More and more you have become those lives
and deaths that have belonged to you.
You have become a sort of grave containing
much that was and is no more in time,
beloved then now and always.
And so you have become a sort of tree
standing over a grave.
Now more than ever you can be generous
toward each day that comes, young,
to disappear forever, and yet remain unaging in the mind.
Everyday you have less reason not to give yourself away.

-Wendell Berry

This is where we come to in life, and I am grateful to have been sent such a beautiful and authentic description. Each day, the moment at hand is the truest and freshest possibility we are given. This is the beauty of aging gracefully, or at least an attempt at it… The acceptance that we hold the lives and deaths we have chosen, that we give over possibility gently to our children. Every day with less reason to give ourselves away.

Applying this wisdom to our relationships is the basis of sustainable love. We are responsible for and to those we love. No more excuses, not for them or for us. Just the watchful presence of a great oak tree looking over the exchange, no more judgment or harsh punishment for being ourselves.

In these uncertain times when our propensity towards violence seems to be eclipsing all the good stories- I hang onto these ideas and hope they make a difference in soft ripples to everyone they reach.

Our feelings are like weather patterns. They are changeable and act on the environment with great power. They inform and distract with their intensity. They reflect the nature of the moment with great accuracy.

Just as our changing weather patterns are shifting and changing the world we live in, our ability to experience and share our feelings in meaningful ways has the power to shift the emotional landscape of our lives.

Yet feelings are for many people a locked box: an experience that overwhelms and is difficult to express. We are taught in a variety of circumstances and for a variety of reasons to suppress our feelings. We learn to silence our feelings so well that the messages in our bodies are not even discernible. Suppressed feelings are not as invisible as you might think. They take on a life in our dreams and eventually become diseases in our bodies. Our inability to express our feelings cuts us off not only from our own experience but limits the connection we feel with the people we love most.

In the same way that we live in denial of the extreme weather patterns that are threatening life as we know it, we disconnect from our emotional life because we are afraid we will be overtaken by our feelings. Small children are frequently shaken by the enormity of their emotional experience. When was the last time you witnessed a temper tantrum in the grocery store- what better metaphor for a giant storm raging inside a little body? What happened when your feelings were too big to hold when you were a child? What happens now?

Jim Carrey was quoted in a Playboy magazine interview last year saying that “Heaven is on the other side of that feeling you get when you’re sitting on the couch and you get up to make a triple-decker sandwich. It’s on the other side of that, when you don’t make the sandwich” .It is about giving up the things that basically keep you from feeling. I am always asking myself ‘What am I going to give up next?’ Because I want to feel.” Learning to feel begins with a choice and the realization that authentic living demands the maturity to open up to your full experience, as messy as it might be.

This is, in fact, the do or die work of relationships; to have the courage to feel the full range of emotions that comes with intimate connections. It is literally the fuel for the fire of passion, the air that keeps a relationship breathing, the stuff of transformation and growing up. Just as our weaknesses and frailties are wedded to our virtues and strengths- the ability to express uncomfortable emotions creates the possibilities of discovering the love and passion that we want most.

How then do we make this choice to live a feeling life, to physically experience the internal storms of growing up and growing old? It is a practice, no different than learning a new musical instrument. Some days you hit the right notes, other days there is no melody at all. In agreeing to the practice, something opens and each moment gives you an opportunity to try again. Slowly you become comfortable with the weather systems of your emotions. Some days it is even comforting to know they are there.

It is a great gift in life to act, to give, to learn, to love without needing any recognition. Tonight was the awards ceremony at the local high school where like in all the high schools across the country, the same 15 kids were recognized over and over for achievements in sports, academics and volunteering. When you aren’t one of the 15, you can’t help feeling at least a little invisible. My daughter was recognized once for a scholarship she won, but passed over for some academic achievement for which she thought she would be named. I watched her spirit fall there next to me, and she held back the tears of disappointment. She wanted to be happy for the kids who won, but the weight of invisibility would not allow the joy.

It is another space in between a rock and a hard place. We want to be big enough to celebrate another person’s success, especially a friend or loved one, and yet can’t quite understand how our own achievements are not enough. Sadness and disappointment can taste bitter and the experience itself can get lost behind it all. Learning to separate the achievement and the recognition is a life’s work.

It is a task worth accomplishing because sustaining loving relationships provides endless opportunities to give of oneself with absolutely no recognition. The repetitious and mundane tasks of living, especially with growing children, rarely provide the feedback and recognition that the energy to keep it going deserve. Chop wood, carry water, pick up laundry and deliver it clean…meal after meal that is prepared, served, cleaned up… this is the stuff of life that must ultimately be an end in itself.

How is this accomplished… no easy answers here. But I recall some Buddhist teachings about filling up our own tanks. Here is where the inner world is larger and more important than the outer. When we hold enough of ourselves dearly and with the same esteem with which we love others, we can offer our efforts and our love freely. There is enough left over for us. When we move beyond recognition, something in us also goes there- we transcend our smaller selves and for moments at a time experience love. No strings attached.

It may be that when we no longer know what to do
we have come to our real work,
and that when we no longer know which way to go
we have come to our real journey.
The mind that is not baffled is not employed.
The impeded stream is the one that sings. -Wendell Berry

This little poem speaks volumes about what it takes to stay committed to our relationships and our dreams. More often than we would like to admit, and often accompanying a significant loss, we confront the brutal truth that we really don’t know where we are going or what to do. It is a disquieting realization, that this moment of not knowing will show us more about ourselves than all the days we spend sure of the next step.

Living with our selves during the groundless moments of pure bafflement is not easy. All of our critical inner voices seem to shout louder and small inconveniences have the weight of real problems. Stepping out of our stories to gain a truer perspective feels like a steep climb up. This is a time when I cut myself while chopping vegetables or stub my toe on a couch that hasn’t moved in years. I seem to attract the impediments like a magnet. Keeping the mind focused on routine chores requires effort. It is especially hard to maintain the care taking of others when we feel lost to ourselves.

So it is not surprising, but it hits like a double whammy, when our relationship falters under the strain of holding ourselves on the edge of the unknown. This is by definition a lonely time, and often requires a language of emotions that is as unfamiliar as the experience itself. Distancing ourselves from our loved ones does not help, but it is easy to do. All the more so, when our bafflement comes from the relationship itself. Relationships go through these same places of groundlessness and precisely when we need to lean in and learn how to love more, we pull away.

“Goodness suffices and endures forever;
On this throughout its years true love depends.” -Ovid

Here is the solution to the moments of groundless, up against the wall, no place to turn kind of time- be kind to yourself and practice goodness with everyone you love, or better still everyone you know. Watch for goodness around you and feel happy that you were there to bear witness. It sounds simple, but it isn’t. It requires vigilance and practice and a willingness to let go of the habitual thoughts that trap us.

Love is the antidote to fear. Fear is often the emotion that holds us tightly in our moments of loss. So try to love more when you are lost, beginning with yourself. I recently read that altruistic behavior actually heals. We feel better when we help other people because in the act of offering love, we are given a true perspective. A perspective that provides a wide enough view to lead you back to a path with heart.

Leave a comment if this feels like you. thanks.