Endings

Living with a fully open heart, no matter what.

How’s that for counterintuitive . . . allow your heart to open wider and wider, open wide and feel everything . . . no matter the state of the world.  No matter the state of your interior or relationships. 

I spent the majority of my life protecting my heart; having no conscious recollection of when exactly it closed or began to close.  I was, for better or for worse, painfully aware of feeling closed off; not in touch with melting or softening moments.

I am far from alone in believing in that apparent protection. We work hard to avoid feeling vulnerable, enfeebled or weak. Babies and children are naturally sensitive – open and attuned – not yet being fully defended.

But when we as adults cry, or recoil or shudder we judge ourselves and others as being weak; we are supposed to be brave and strong.  Not wanting to feel or appear weak, we distance from our feelings.  We defend against hurt and rejection. We defend against grief, fear, confusion, and uncertainty, not wanting to acknowledge we have been impacted and/or feel threatened. 

For the most part . . . to one degree or another, we deny we are going to die. 

Knowing we live in a world of change . . . a world in which everyone and everything comes and goes . . . we, fighting against this reality, fend off a strumming dread . . . it can feel unbearable to lose what we love or need or believe we cannot live without. 

I can hear a chorus shouting . . . duh!  Why wouldn’t we be?  Living in this world of judgment, guaranteed loss, and rejection.  

And yet, the deeper truth is a fully opened heart – an awakened heart – knows no boundaries and meets everything and everyone without judgment and without distancing.  Effortlessly.  

It is impervious to suffering . It does not close down.  

Heart closed I suffered mightily.  Heart open I feel deeply and do not suffer. 

Endings!

If I had known the last time I ate a See’s candy that it was the very last time I would taste this, would I have savored it more fully.

Friends and I have met at a beach-side cafe for Sunday brunch . . . countless times.  They are now physically incapable of the drive and the energy such an outing takes.  Did I have any inkling when we last met at the cafe we would never meet there again?  And if I had, would our visit have registered more deeply?

Someone I knew has died and two of my friends who are experiencing terminal illnesses have worsened and talk about wanting to die.  Stores and restaurants that have been open for business for decades are shuttered, there are more people without a home, sometimes splayed across a well-walked sidewalk.  The college year has begun and many are empty nesters. Trees that have grown to unimaginable heights have been cut down. Scientists tell us some crazily high percentage of wild animals are no longer roaming our earth.

The news is filled with one extinction after another as we, collectively, try to get our heads out of the sand when it comes to the fragility of our planet and the very real possibility of it being too late to save our home.

What happens as you are reading this, so far?  More often than not, we tell ourselves to look away; it is too hard, it is too sad to whole-heartedly face all those endings.  

When we do bravely turn towards endings, there is something profoundly paradoxical and beautiful about meeting our sorrow fully and completely.  There is something enlivening about knowing, really knowing we are going to die, not be here.  What is it like feeling the warm water of the shower knowing this experience will not last forever.  

What is it like hearing the sound of a loved one’s voice knowing one of you will die or leave? 

What is it like to grieve . . . deeply grieve with no ground beneath you?  What is it like to love your life so greatly it brings you to your knees?

These are evocative questions . . . they are a wake-up call to not miss how it feels to hear the voice of your loved one. To not miss the millions of moments you have, right while you are experiencing them.  To open your heart  indiscriminately. 

The deeper I feel, the closer I come to direct contact with the real, the more alive I am. It turns out that knowing, viscerally knowing/accepting endings . . . my own, my loved ones, the world itself . . . heartbreaking as it is, is vibrant and beautiful.  Stunningly beautiful.  Much to my delight and surprise, knowing I will die, maybe tomorrow and maybe years from now, affords me greater and greater gratitude for the simplest things – the strawberry in my cereal, eye contact with a stranger, hiking on rocky terrain. 

The heart is vast . . . vast beyond our minds’ comprehension and with great grace and ease is naturally receptive to grief . . . to gratitude  . . . to sorrow, and to love, its very nature.  

We are born a bundle of sensations, turning towards warmth and gentle embraces. This open, unguarded and tender beingness is deep within us.  We are the very warmth and embrace we yearn for.

We long for the return to our natural being . . . a direct contact with sensation and uncomplicated feeling.  We long to love big, really, really big.