Getting
Unstuck
“I
know now that, over the years, my own cries that life is unfair have
come from the inescapable pain of living, and these cries, while
understandable, have always diverted me from feeling my way through
the pain of my breakage into re-formation of my life. Somehow,
crying, “Unfair” has always kept me stuck in what hurts.”
Mark
Nepo (The Book of Awakening)
We
all want our life to be happy. Humans, at least most of us, are
attracted to contentment, and repelled by pain. Unfortunately, life
itself is filled with unfair experiences. We fall in love with people
who don't love us, we are betrayed by the ones we love the most, we
are born into families who don't love us enough, or in the right way,
our bodies betray us with ailments and diseases, we have children
with addictions, we have children maimed by war or accident. This
list could go on and on, because all manner of bad experiences befall
us over the course of a lifetime. Sometimes, we latch on to our
wounds—I'm an adult child of an alcoholic, or I'm a war widow, or
I am the mother of a child with handicaps. That wound becomes our
identity. Life is unfair because I have this terrible pain that
others don't.
The
effect, all too often, is to numb us to the joy that life does hold.
We tend to mute the big joys, like a new-born baby, or the years of
marriage that are happy. Mostly, we miss altogether the little joys,
like a beautiful sunrise, a great meal, a conversation with a friend.
They blur to insignificance if we are focused on the unfairness of
life and our unfortunate wounds. We cause ourselves to live in pain
all the time, regardless of the joys that surround us.
Accepting
that life is sometimes unfair for us, and for everyone else in
different ways, is how we enable ourselves to enjoy the small stuff,
and let go of the wounds. We are not made happier by dredging up
life's misfortunes over and over, in order to keep our wounded
identity. We are made happier by appreciating the moments of joy
wherever and whenever we find them. Feeling the pain, and allowing it
to flow through, is how we get to contentment.
In
the Spirit,
Jane
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