Life is the greatest storyteller.
—MN
NO MATTER WHAT we’re going through, faith in life means believing that there’s always more beyond the condition of our understanding—the way the rest of the Universe whirls beyond the light of any given star. In just this way, we’re always part of something larger than our condition, and the circumstance we’re in—real and consuming as it can be—is not the condition of the Whole.
Faith in this distinction allows for healing. Because, as enough water will dilute poison, enough of life will dilute pain and fear and worry. While it’s up to us to see it through, unmitigated life will in time mitigate the edge and press of what is difficult. This is why it’s crucial to open when we’re closed, so life can do what’s inherent to its nature: restore itself. Inevitably, what we face is always real and there’s always an edge where what we face drops off into the vastness of life that is just continuing.
When I feel small, life won’t make me large, but letting life in will dissipate my smallness. Then it’s my work to re-find my worth. This is how we partner with life: it gives and we receive. Then we inhabit our worth and give back, the way plants and humans exchange oxygen and carbon dioxide. In this way, the vastness, indifferent as it is, remains life-giving.
None of this will prevent us from suffering or from the cascade of circumstance we face for being human. Yet this journey appears differently for every person. And it’s the very personal initiation of experience and erosion of our stubbornness that lets our true nature show itself. Until, accepting our true nature, we gain access to our gifts.
We all struggle between the narrow condition of our understanding and the vastness continuing around us. As soon as we succumb to our narrow condition, whatever it might be, as soon as we stop receiving life, we begin to paint everything with the color of our trouble. This is how we can listen to another without truly hearing them, how we can touch something beautiful and overlay it with where we’ve been or where we think we’re going, and miss its beauty.
Under the press of our particular condition, we can end up drifting into the past or the future, while stepping about as a ghost in the moment at hand. You can tell when someone is not where they are. Their sentences never quite finish. They seem to look through everyone they meet. Their eyes are like balloons let go of. We’ve all done this. So the challenge isn’t to criticize but to course-correct.
When I find myself drifting into the future or dwelling in the past, I close my eyes and start over, trying to bring all of me to whatever is there when I open them again. I vow to look at one thing at a time, like a child. I vow to listen more closely, like a person gone blind. I vow to rediscover the world in whatever gritty, precious thing is before me. And to quiet my mind, so I might feel the vastness of life flowing between us.
It helps to tell stories. I share this one because Tom’s story is our story. Tom is an architect who feels very lost. Today he’s leaving work, entering the elevator on the fiftieth floor, alone in the metal box taking him back to the ground, stopping along the way to gather others. As he descends, he leans against the wall of the elevator, wondering how he came to be so tired and lost. Tom is a man who started out in innocence, but as he tried to love, he was hurt. As he tried to help others, he was manipulated and betrayed. Tom began with a sublime trust in life but became jaded and fearful. What he doesn’t know is that when he’s afraid, he forgets what he knows. When he fears situations, he forgets what he’s learned about moving through the world. When he fears he’s lost his way, he forgets who he is. When he fears the world is lacking, he forgets the gift of life.
Floor by floor, Tom descends. He wonders if tomorrow will be any different. What he doesn’t know is that when he fears there won’t be enough, he becomes greedy. When he fears those around him, he becomes cruel. When he fears he’s not enough, he inflates himself, becoming larger than he is, and starts knocking things over and wanting things that aren’t his.
The elevator opens on the ground floor, and Tom walks into the street where the late sun curls around the buildings to spill upon his face. He stops and closes his eyes. It’s the best he’s felt all day. Standing there in the late light, Tom begins to quiet his fear and starts to remember how to move through the world. Walking a few blocks in the light, he starts to remember who he is. As he begins to listen to the sky, he starts to remember the gift of life.
Each of us struggles between being insular and making our way in the world. One more story that is our story: On a dreary day, a vital, thoughtful woman starts to build a tall, thick wall. She thinks she’s building a castle, but in time it becomes a prison. Though she thinks the wall keeps everything out, surprise in time curls over the top like a cloud and circles her head like a fog. And sorrow in time seeps through the cracks of her wall like a distant memory that lodges in her ear. And forgetting that she built the castle-turned-prison, she puts her sad ear to the wall and listens for life on the other side.
Those who love her haven’t given up. They pound on the wall for her to come out, but she can hardly hear them. No one knows what pain or argument sent her into exile within herself. But after a while, life leaves her alone. Until on a breezy day, the song of two birds circling each other drifts through the keyhole of her castle-turned-prison and some part of her has to see those birds. As she opens the weighty door of her own making, the vastness returns and life kisses her forehead as she weeps at how much beauty she has missed.
Unmitigated life will in time mitigate the edge and press of what is difficult. This is why it’s crucial to open when we’re closed.