All week I’ve been thinking about how people are complicated and contradictory. A person can be a mass murderer and an excellent dog parent. A man can beat his wife and act meek at work. A woman can preach love and kindness and be sharp and cutting with her inner circle. Instead of trying to puzzle out which side is the “real them,” my perspective is it’s all them.
Walt Whitman speaks to this in one of his poems when he writes, “Do I contradict myself? / Very well then I contradict myself, / (I am large, I contain multitudes.)” In therapy, this contradiction is recognized via the modality “Internal Family Systems,” also known as parts work. The traditional form of IFS categorizes the various parts of a person into three roles:
- Managers, who seek to control surroundings, manage emotions, and navigate tasks in daily life.
- Exiles, or parts that hold hurt, fear, and shame that are tucked away and hidden from conscious awareness.
- Firefighters, who seek to inhibit difficult emotions by any means necessary such as addiction.
Personally, I find those categories too limiting. For instance, I’ve done a lot of trauma and recovery work so the parts of me that hold hurt, fear, and shame are not exiled – they are seen, heard, and accepted. Regardless, what I appreciate about parts work is it recognizes how complex humans are – that we contradict ourselves and act in surprising ways. And instead of focusing on one part or another part, IFS emphasizes embracing all of it. IFS says the part of you that flies into a rage is just as much you as the part that weeps over a sunset. It’s ALL you.
We are everything. Photo by Austin Neill on Unsplash
Our society very much likes polarization and black-and-white thinking. “This person is a monster! This person is a saint! This thing is good! This thing is bad!” But that’s not true. Reality is nuanced. People are nuanced. You can be a little bit right and a little bit wrong AT THE SAME TIME! Baffling, right? But it’s true.
This is something I appreciate about my spiritual tradition – it emphasizes embracing everything. It doesn’t say this thing is an expression of an infinite loving consciousness but that thing is not. It doesn’t say, “You’re only allowed to feel happy and peaceful all the time.” No, my spiritual tradition says, “You’re human, you have instincts and emotions and we want you to feel those too. We want you to recognize those parts of you are also sacred and holy.”
Gorgeous, right? We practice viewing everything as sacred with something called madhuvidyá, which literally means “honey knowledge.” It’s a sort of magic wand that transforms your thinking when done well. My spiritual teacher says, “This madhuvidyá will pervade your exterior and interior with … [ecstasy] and will permanently alleviate all your afflictions. Then the ferocious jaws of [degeneration] cannot come and devour you. The glory of one and only one benign entity will shine forth to you from one and all objects.”
The practice of madhuvidyá says even this thing I don’t like or perhaps even hate is an expression of an infinite loving consciousness. Practicing madhuvidyá means I’m able to see beyond the surface of people, places, and things to witness their true form. I recognize everything is Brahma, Cosmic Consciousness, Source, the Universe, whatever name you have for it. And just as the universe is vast, complicated, and contradictory, people are too. As a reflection of Cosmic Consciousness, we contain multitudes.
I dream of a world where we understand people are not one way or another. A world where we recognize people have parts of themselves that get expressed at different times. A world where instead of thinking one part is real and another is false, we understand that all of it is true. A world where we remember that as reflections of Cosmic Consciousness, we contain multitudes.
Another world is not only possible, it’s probable.
As I’ve continued to process the devastation in North Carolina from the hurricane, what occurred to me is love is here, too. It’s the people who are helpers, but it’s more than that. Love is all around, holding us in good times and bad. It reminds me of an experience I had in 2017 when I had a vision of sinking to the bottom of the ocean floor and saw my spiritual teacher there with me. It inspired a poem:
I am there too
In the darkness and the mourning,
I am there too
In the somber and the despairing,
I am there too
In the heavy and the hopeless,
I am there too
I am there, with you
In the deepest depths and the lowest lows,
I am there, with you
Not one minute alone
Not one minute by yourself
I’m with you always
I am your truest Self
In my spiritual tradition, we say the Divine Beloved is everywhere and everything. There is no separation. The Divine is love and fear, light and dark. It’s not possible for some things to be God and others not to be because everything, everything is made of God-stuff. I get a reminder that love is everywhere every day. If you follow me on Instagram, you already know that I see hearts or the word love every day even if I don’t necessarily take a picture. For instance, on Friday, a teenager sat in front of me and what was shaved into their hair? A heart of course. I asked permission to take a photo but they either didn’t hear me or ignored me so that is a picture I don’t have.
I had literally hundreds of pictures to choose from but this one seemed the most appropriate. Photo taken by me.
Why do I see hearts every day? Number one because I look for them but number two it’s because I think the Divine Beloved wants to remind me and anyone who knows me that love. is. here. Love is always here. Love is holding us, cradling us, taking care of us in happy times, in sad times, in celebration, and sorrow.
There is nowhere we can go that love is not. That is why hell doesn’t exist in my spiritual tradition. My teacher said, “[S]piritual aspirants should never be unnecessarily worried about heaven and hell. If one does noble deeds or sings spiritual songs in hell, it is the bounden duty of the Lord of hell to be there, too, and thus it automatically ceases to be a hell. You can transform a hell into a heaven.”
We transform any hell into heaven by remembering the existence of love. That’s not to make light of hellish things, nor to encourage spiritual bypassing but once we process our feelings, can we remember a greater truth? Can we remember that love is here too?
I dream of a world where we feel our feelings and also understand the Divine Beloved is with us through thick and thin. A world where we realize love isn’t confined to happy and joyous places but also in the muck. A world where we realize no matter what is happening, love is here, too.
Another world is not only possible, it’s probable.
The past week has been a huge lesson in humility. I don’t mean humiliation or low self-esteem. The word “humility” originates from the Church Latin word humilis, which literally translates as “on the ground.” Other words that mean “Earth” are also part of the etymology of “humility.” Being humble means keeping your feet on the ground, and staying present here on Earth. Sometimes humility is interpreted in the context of others, i.e., remembering you are no better and no worse than anyone else. Humility can also mean recognizing how powerless you are over yourself and others.
That’s been my experience in the past week, recognizing how powerless I am. I’ve had social interactions, or non-interactions as the case may be, that I REALLY didn’t anticipate. I reached out to eight people and none got back to me within a day or two like they usually do. Some of them still haven’t responded. As I told my friend, “If it’s odd, it’s God applies to the unpleasant things too.” I think God was forcing me to touch some unhealed places within me, particularly in my past where I felt lonely, alone, and invisible.
And then on Friday, I woke up with twinges of pain in the same places I experienced from my car accident in 2021. For context, I haven’t felt pain in those places for at least 1.5 years. It’s not like they ache on a regular basis. No, this was a searing, out-of-the-blue pain. It, too, forced me to confront a quite literal old wound.
Sometimes life is like this. Photo by Sam Moghadam Khamseh on Unsplash
When I slowed down and asked myself what was up, why this all was happening, the answer that came to me was, “Your wounds are meant to be healed. You cannot pretend they don’t exist. Nor can you focus on how good your life is now as a way to fix when it wasn’t.” In other words, it doesn’t help to say, “Look how many friends you have now!” in response to the pain I felt when friendship was scarce.
Like I wrote about in 2020, trauma is always running in the background because it’s stored in the central nervous system. We used to think trauma was stored in the brain as a memory, but the latest research shows trauma is stored in the body. You might have heard of the book The Body Keeps the Score by Dr. Bessel van der Kolk which is all about this. He writes, “As long as you keep secrets and suppress information, you are fundamentally at war with yourself…The critical issue is allowing yourself to know what you know. That takes an enormous amount of courage.”
What I know is I’ve felt deep emotional and physical pain in my life. What I know is some of it remains unresolved because otherwise, I wouldn’t feel so triggered when eight people don’t get back to me. What I know is my physical body still has scar tissue from the various accidents I’ve been in. What I also know, but struggle to believe when so many things go wrong at once, is that my higher power wants me to be happy, joyous, and free.
I’ve quoted this poem by Hafiz before but I’m sharing it again because it’s appropriate. It’s called “Tripping Over Joy”:
What is the difference
Between your experience of Existence
And that of a saint?
The saint knows
That the spiritual path
Is a sublime chess game with God
And that the Beloved
Has just made such a Fantastic Move
That the saint is now continually
Tripping over Joy
And bursting out in Laughter
And saying, “I Surrender!”
Whereas, my dear,
I am afraid you still think
You have a thousand serious moves.
Humility reminds me I don’t have a thousand serious moves left. Humility reminds me that all I can do sometimes is surrender. Sometimes in laughter but sometimes in sorrow. That’s what I do when life brings me to my knees: I give in.
I dream of a world where we realize there’s a difference between humility and humiliation. A world where we understand old wounds continue to exist until we confront them. A world where we understand Higher Power wants us to be happy, joyous, and free, and sometimes that means hurting emotionally and physically. A world where we surrender when life brings us to our knees.
Another world is not only possible, it’s probable.
Even though I sync up better with the Jewish New Year, the Gregorian New Year still acts as a mile marker for me. I ask, “How does this year compare with last year? What did I think of this year? What happened?” When I contemplate 2023, I realize I couldn’t have predicted 99% of the things that transpired. I thought I knew what the future held but I didn’t, like, at all.
I want to predict the future to give myself a sense of safety. If I know what’s coming, I think I can prepare for it but I’m not sure you can ever truly prepare. For instance, you build up savings in case you lose your job but then you lose your job and it’s still discombobulating. Or your parent is on their deathbed and then they die and it’s still devastating. Can you ever prepare for what life brings you? Or can you only live it, one day at a time?
The future is like this. Photo by Maddy Weiss on Unsplash
I’m reminded of that famous Rainer Maria Rilke quote that says:
“I beg you…to have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don’t search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer.”
As we enter the Gregorian New Year, I’m living the questions. I keep searching for answers but the answers aren’t here yet because the future is still unfolding. There are still many unknowns for us mortals. At this point, you might be sick of reading poems on “Another World is Probable” but I’m sharing another poem! Here are three stanzas from John O’Donohue’s poem “For a New Beginning:”
In out-of-the-way places of the heart,
Where your thoughts never think to wander,
This beginning has been quietly forming,
Waiting until you were ready to emerge.
…
Though your destination is not yet clear
You can trust the promise of this opening;
Unfurl yourself into the grace of beginning
That is at one with your life’s desire.
Awaken your spirit to adventure;
Hold nothing back, learn to find ease in risk;
Soon you will be home in a new rhythm,
For your soul senses the world that awaits you.
There is a world awaiting us but we’re rising up to meet it. We’re living the future with all its question marks and unknowns. Life happens here, now. While I’m mulling over whether this thing will happen or that thing, my life continues. In the shadow of my friend’s death, I want to be present for what is, not what could be. And that means not worrying about the future and instead letting it unfold as it will.
I dream of a world where we have patience with the unresolved questions in our hearts. A world where we understand the future is mostly unknowable and so it’s better to be here, now. A world where we trust the promise of our life’s opening and the grace of beginning. A world where we let the future unfold.
Another world is not only possible, it’s probable.
A former therapist and coach told me once that grief can feel pleasurable in an unexpected way because every other emotion is heightened. You’re sad but also recognizing the transience of life and because of that transience, strawberries taste sweeter and time with loved ones is more precious. When he said this to me, I told him he was off his rocker because there was nothing pleasurable about grief but now I see what he meant.
We’re theoretically in the “happiest time of the year,” but against the backdrop of the holidays with the sparkly lights, sappy movies, and festivities, I’m sad. I’m grieving the loss of people I knew well and people that I didn’t. In the background, there’s a refrain that so-and-so isn’t here anymore and so every moment becomes more precious because I know in my bones that tomorrow isn’t promised. Grief shakes me from the dream where I think I know how anything will play out. I don’t. I really, really don’t.
My former therapist is right. My heart, it hurts. It’s squeezing in my chest and feels tender and fragile. And yet, because of the pain, there’s also more pleasure because when I come across delightful things, they are more delightful. A father and daughter were on the same Bart train as me to the airport, and then on the same flight to Seattle, and then they also took the Seattle light rail and sat next to me on that train. I watched the daughter swinging from the rail above her head as if it were monkey bars and smiled.
Darkness and light are paired together. Photo by Sasha Freemind on Unsplash
I look at the birds nibbling seed from the feeder outside my parents’ window and say, “Wow. You’re so beautiful.” The sun seems to shine brighter, flower colors are more vibrant, and everything is amplified right now because death is also so present. I’m hugging my parents a little tighter, a little longer, aware that our time together is limited.
Rashani Réa speaks to this in her poem, “The Unbroken:”
There is a brokenness
out of which comes the unbroken,
a shatteredness
out of which blooms the unshatterable.
There is a sorrow
beyond all grief which leads to joy
and a fragility
out of whose depths emerges strength.
There is a hollow space
too vast for words
through which we pass with each loss,
out of whose darkness
we are sanctioned into being.
There is a cry deeper than all sound
whose serrated edges cut the heart
as we break open to the place inside
which is unbreakable and whole,
while learning to sing.
I didn’t think it was possible, but sorrow is amplifying joy because the dial has been turned up in my life. I’m just as likely to burst into tears as I am to burst out laughing. I feel a little unhinged, a little uncontained because I am. Something has been broken open and at the moment I am painfully, exquisitely alive.
I dream of a world where we hold our grief and our joy with tenderness. A world where we recognize sometimes sorrow leads to joy because we’re aware of how fleeting everything is. A world where we absorb the preciousness of where we are right here, right now because we recognize this, too, shall pass.
Another world is not only possible, it’s probable.
It’s a weird time to be Jewish and to celebrate Hanukkah, which commemorates a military victory. I’m still lighting the candles with my friends and family but the whole thing has me contemplating many things: how to be in the world, what I think, why it matters, and who is listening.
If I listen to people in the digital world, everything seems terrible. I don’t only mean the active wars. People are saying spiteful things during presidential debates. They’re presenting polarizing views and shooting for the lowest common denominator rather than higher ideals. If I only focus on the digital world, I get depressed. But in the physical world, things aren’t so bad depending on where you live.
The sign says it all. Photo by Adam Nemeroff on Unsplash
In the physical world, people say, “Hey, is that your umbrella?” when they notice one left behind on a train seat. In the physical world, strangers smile at each other. In the physical world, good Samaritans help elderly ladies carry their walkers up bus steps. It reminds me of a poem by Danusha Laméris called “Small Kindnesses” that I’m quoting a portion of:
I’ve been thinking about the way, when you walk
down a crowded aisle, people pull in their legs
to let you by. Or how strangers still say “bless you”
when someone sneezes, a leftover
from the Bubonic plague. “Don’t die,” we are saying.
And sometimes, when you spill lemons
from your grocery bag, someone else will help you
pick them up. Mostly, we don’t want to harm each other.
We want to be handed our cup of coffee hot,
and to say thank you to the person handing it. To smile
at them and for them to smile back. For the waitress
to call us honey when she sets down the bowl of clam chowder,
and for the driver in the red pick-up truck to let us pass.
That’s my experience of the physical world. That mostly we don’t want to harm each other. That usually we see one another as human beings and say, “Here, let me make things a little easier for you.” It’s that genuine care and love for humanity that solves problems great and small, according to my spiritual teacher.
“This love will give people guidance; it will show them what to do and what not to do,” he said. “It is not necessary to study great numbers of books or to rely upon those who speculate with the future of the silent masses. The only essential requirement is to look upon humanity with genuine sympathy.”
That’s what I’m doing. Day by day, week after week, month after month, year after year, I’m looking upon humanity with genuine sympathy and love hoping that one day, it will all add up. That my small actions and someone else’s small actions will turn into something bigger and greater so that when people are out in the world, they’ll say to themselves, “Things aren’t so bad.”
I dream of a world where we recognize there can be a difference between what people say and how they treat each other. A world where we remember that people may be mean and spiteful on the internet, but in the physical world, they hold open doors for one another and say “bless you,” when someone sneezes. A world where we understand the only way to solve our problems great and small is by starting from a place of love and kindness.
Another world is not only possible, it’s probable.
Sometimes I put my happiness on layaway. I think about how amazing it will feel when I move somewhere big enough for a dedicated office space. When I have a house with a lush backyard illuminated with twinkling fairy lights. In the interim though, I’m in a one-bedroom apartment with no green space. Yes, I have plants in containers, but it’s not the same as a true backyard. Does that mean I’m doomed to be unhappy?
I’m currently reading the Artist’s Way and one of the exercises is to write out your ideal day. My ideal day includes, you guessed it, eating outside in a lush backyard illuminated with fairy lights. The author, Julia Cameron, asks, “What festive elements of your ideal day can you have right now?” Well, that certainly isn’t a question I ever asked myself.
I don’t have a backyard, but I do have a walkway that serves as a porch so on impulse, I purchased fairy lights to string along the railing and a camp chair to sit in. I’m still waiting for the fairy lights to arrive but tada! For less than $20 I gave myself something I’ve been dreaming of for years, or at least a small taste of it. I don’t have to earn more money to move to a bigger place, and then find the perfect place, and then live there. I can give myself what I want right here, right now.
My happiness includes fairy lights. Photo by muhammad asif on Unsplash
It begs the question, “Why was I waiting?” I was waiting because I wanted things to be “perfect” first. I wanted my ideal and not the less-than-ideal, as if only the ideal could make me happy. But is that really true? Psychology professor Robert Emmons says:
Research on emotion shows that positive emotions wear off quickly. Our emotional systems like newness. They like novelty . . . . But gratitude makes us appreciate the value of something, and when we appreciate the value of something, we extract more benefits from it; we’re less likely to take it for granted.
In effect, I think gratitude allows us to participate more in life. We notice the positives more, and that magnifies the pleasures you get from life. Instead of adapting to goodness, we celebrate goodness.
In other words, I can be happier, right now, by celebrating goodness. By enjoying that I have a porch to sit on, that the fairy lights will twinkle in dusky light, and that a breeze ruffles my hair. I don’t need to wait to feel pleasure. I can feel content right here, right now. It reminds me of Mary Oliver’s famous poem “The Summer Day.” She writes:
Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean—
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down—
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don’t know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?
As for me, I plan on creating my ideal life before everything is perfectly in place. I plan on giving myself the simple things I yearn for, sometimes for years, before it looks exactly how I think it should. Instead of adapting to goodness, I plan on celebrating goodness.
I dream of a world where we stop waiting to give ourselves the simple pleasures we long for. A world where we make our dreams come true before they are perfect, before they are ideal. A world where we recognize positive emotions wear off quickly but we can cultivate contentment right here, right now.
Another world is not only possible, it’s probable.
There’s a post-it on my bathroom mirror that says, “Remember life can be surprising and delightful.” To be honest, it’s been ages since surprises were anything but terrible. For instance, “Surprise! The water on your street has been shut off!” or “Surprise! You lost your wallet!” I’d kind of forgotten that surprises can be enjoyable and had an experience on Saturday that recalibrated me.
I’d intended to go hiking nearby but because of how my day unfolded, that no longer made sense. Not wanting to be cooped up all day, I chose to walk around my neighborhood instead without a destination or intention in mind. I had nowhere to go, nothing to do, no one to see. When I approached a certain intersection, I opened the maps app on my phone and noticed there was a trail nearby. “Great! Maybe I’ll go hiking after all!” What I didn’t expect is the route to the trailhead involved a hidden staircase. That’s right, the staircase was smushed between two houses and if you didn’t know it was there, you might overlook it.
Even now I’m smiling as I think about it because it felt like an adventure ascending those stairs and finding the trailhead, which similar to the staircase, was smack dab at the end of a residential street. Houses, cars, and then boom! Woods. I love that about my neighborhood. The trail itself also surprised me because it was decorated with art pieces. Children and adults alike painted wooden planks with smiley faces, decorated mailboxes, and constructed fairy houses. Not only that, dangling from certain tree branches were swings! In the middle of the woods! I truly was not expecting that although I know it happens.
A smidge of what I saw on Saturday. Photo by me!
My good mood started to radiate out and inspired me to chat with people I saw on the trail, especially if I passed them twice. “We meet again,” I said to one of them. “Your dog is beautiful,” I told another. The trail wended through redwoods and along a creek. The creek sluiced through concrete tunnels, which were yes, covered with graffiti, but also art. Someone painted two dolphins arcing on either side of a tunnel. Others spray-painted hearts everywhere, which you may or may not know is my thing. In short, hiking the trail was exactly the sort of experience that reminded me life can be fun, that it’s not all drudgery.
I mention that because it’s VERY easy for me to focus on how hard things are, the problems I’m facing, and forget the good stuff. I forget about or overlook the fun stuff, the stuff that makes me happy to be alive. But that joy is the undercurrent of our world. I’ve used this quote before but the ancient Hindu scriptures, the Vedas, say, “This quinquelemental world has been born out of joy, is being maintained in joy, and into sacred joy will melt.” We come from joy, live in joy, and return to joy. Joy is within us, which David Whyte reminds us of in a line from his poem that says:
Inside everyone
is a great shout of joy
waiting to be born.
For some of us, that great shout of joy takes longer to be expressed. Sometimes the joy is silent for months or even years, but it still exists all the same. Maybe like I wrote about in April with regards to mood, we just have to wait and that joy will return.
I dream of a world where we all experience more joy. A world where we remember joy can arrive in the form of an unexpected sculpture or a flower bursting from the soil. A world where we remember if we’re going through a hard time, joy will find us once again because joy is our birthright.
Another world is not only possible, it’s probable.
Lately I keep thinking about the joy in small pleasures. Over Memorial Day Weekend, I felt some FOMO (“fear of missing out” for those of you unfamiliar with the acronym) because other people posted pictures of themselves at the beach, or taking a long hike, or chilling in someone’s backyard. I didn’t do any of those things. I was housesitting for some friends and swayed in a hammock while reading a good book. I picked strawberries straight from the plant and plucked snap peas off the vine.
Similarly, this past weekend I plopped blueberries directly into my mouth after pulling them from the bush. I had dinner with six adults and two kids indoors, without masks, for the first time since February 2020. I’m not ashamed to admit I felt moved by the experience.
For the past year and some change, I haven’t done any of the things I mentioned above because I don’t own a hammock, or blueberry bushes, or strawberry plants. I haven’t dined with a large group of friends because it was too challenging to maneuver safely and they didn’t feel comfortable putting themselves at risk without being vaccinated.
I think hammock time is my favorite time. Photo by 🇸🇮 Janko Ferlič on Unsplash
Coming out of this pandemic, I’m treasuring those small pleasures: a warm breeze, fresh fruit and vegetables, dinner with friends. None of the things I mentioned are big affairs like a birth, wedding, graduation, or heck, even a vacation. They’re mundane and it’s easy for me to forget how much joy I derive from them.
I forget it’s the small things, the pedestrian things that can also fill my heart to bursting. It’s not always the grand adventures or the big events that move me the most. Coming out of this pandemic has shown me that. It reminds me of Mary Oliver’s famous poem “The Summer Day.” She writes:
Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean—
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down—
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don’t know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?
I know I’m often focused on the big things but maybe I can take a page from Mary Oliver’s book and remind myself my wild and precious life includes not only the clamor and the clangor of big events but also the quiet chirp of crickets and laughter among friends.
I dream of a world where we savor the simple pleasures. A world where we recognize the joy in the mundane. A world where we remember happiness can be found not only in winning an award or manifesting our dreams, but also in hugging a dear friend and playing with a small child.
Another world is not only possible, it’s probable.
I keep thinking about the notion that my higher power wants me to be happy, joyous, and free. Due to the trauma in my background, it’s a heck of a lot easier to think God wants me to be sad, miserable, and suffering. That’s what happens with trauma – it rewires your brain and changes your perspective as a form of protection. It also certainly doesn’t help that I live in a Christian-dominant society, meaning, the idea I’ll be sent to hell for doing something wrong, is prevalent. And the thing about culture is we can’t escape it – it’s the air we breathe.
All of this is to say it’s easier for me to believe terrible things will happen in my life, to brace myself for the worst possible outcome. But is that really true? Isn’t it just as likely the best possible outcome could occur? And haven’t I seen evidence over and over again that things work out? Maybe not right away, but eventually? And if I’m wrong and things are actually terrible, which perspective makes me feel better: the optimistic one or the pessimistic one?
This isn’t a post about the benefit of optimism but rather joy itself. My spiritual philosophy emphasizes this over and over again, how we are all running after happiness. Not only human beings, but all beings. For instance, cats constantly seek warm, comfortable spots so they can curl up and sleep. We are all seeking joy.
The ancient Hindu scriptures, the Vedas, say, “This quinquelemental world has been born out of joy, is being maintained in joy, and into sacred joy will melt.” Wow. Let that statement sink in: The world was born out of joy, is being maintained in joy, and into sacred joy will melt. Instead of being a cold, cruel place, the world can be a beautiful, joyful one.
While typing this, a moth landed on my window and watching it I started thinking about the saying, “like moths to a flame.” It reminded me there’s a natural attraction in this world, that we are all drawn to something whether we’re conscious of it or not. That we’re pulled toward joy and maybe it doesn’t have to feel so difficult. Dancing brings joy. Singing brings joy. Looking at pictures of cute kids and baby animals brings joy. But so do things like serving others and meditating.
I’d like to end with a poem by Hafiz because I think it’s appropriate. It’s called “Tripping Over Joy”:
What is the difference
Between your experience of Existence
And that of a saint?
The saint knows
That the spiritual path
Is a sublime chess game with God
And that the Beloved
Has just made such a Fantastic Move
That the saint is now continually
Tripping over Joy
And bursting out in Laughter
And saying, “I Surrender!”
Whereas, my dear,
I am afraid you still think
You have a thousand serious moves.
I dream of a world where we are happy, joyous, and free. A world where we realize we are born out of joy and unto joy we shall return. A world where we remember there’s a force in the world that’s drawing us to it like a moth to a flame. A world where we realize that force is love and the process can be a joyful one.
Another world is not only possible, it’s probable.