Moving (E)Motions

On NPR earlier this year, Sebastian Junger discussed the death of his friend Tim Heatherington, a journalist killed. He used a phrase to describe the pace of fear in combat - "[combat is] scary beforehand, the anticipation is very scary, and afterwards the fear catches up with you." The idea of an emotion catching up with you fits exactly with my experience of grief. I didn't have a lot of time to grieve when my mom was sick. I did it alone, at home, when I wasn't with her. I cried in hospitals, but I mostly tried not to, and tried to send all of my energy to helping her and hoping for her recovery.

Now, a little over nine months after her death, I'm grieving. (I could say I'm still grieving, but I hate the implication of "should be ending" that that little word adds. I'll grieve for the rest of my life - in healthy and productive ways, to be sure, but it will never end. The only way grief ends, I think, is if you don't love the person anymore.)

Compare Junger to this line from Fitzgerald's "The Crackup": "The world only exists through your apprehension of it." The first time I read that, I defined the second noun - apprehension - as understanding, as I think he intended. The second time, I thought of fear. Fear certainly creates worlds for some people. We talk a lot in yoga about letting go of fear, but it's not always so easy. When I was faced with the prospect of losing my mom's physical presence, I was more afraid than I've ever been. Now, just like grief, the fear is still with me - because the world without her is a scary place.

What fear and grief both do over time, rather than disappear, is shapeshift and change. They mold themselves to changes I'm making in my life. They shift a bit to the background, hovering, when I share happy memories of my mom or think of how earthshatteringly proud she'd be of me and all that I'm managing to handle without her.

Just as my fear and grief are unending, so does my mother surpass all boundaries. She is in the air, the sky, the sun, my smile. This isn't what either of us wanted, but it's what we have to handle, and I'm handling it in all the ways she taught me.

Lila(s)

My amazing teacher Emily talked in class yesterday about lila (लीला), the Sanskrit word for "play" or "concept" (as in "the play of good and bad"). She used it as a way to emphasize that the bad and frustrating is part of life along with the good. This was something I really needed to hear, and it's a concept that I think the Western world (at least!) could use more of. My world definitely could.

We don't always show our best selves, after all. Sometimes we make bad decisions. Sometimes we sell ourselves short. Sometimes our mind blanks.

We are always fighting to be the most ideal selves we can be, to have the most ideal life we can imagine, and we forget to leave space for the mistakes and missed steps that inevitably come.

This isn't license to ignore our goals and morals, of course. It's simply, I think, a way to allow us to be imperfect people while striving toward being our truest, best selves. It's the only way to appreciate the many millions of facets that make up each of us as people.

(In case you need a way to remember it: my favorite flower is a purple or pink one that in French is called "lilas," a gentler word than its English equivalent. No connection in meaning, but I like linguistic play.)