"Where there is sorrow, there is holy ground."
-Oscar Wilde
The other night I had a dream that I was parked on a city street, helping my three daughters into the car. As we walked around the car, opening doors, I looked up and saw that there was a young man on top of the skyscraper above us, about to jump off. I saw fear in my children's eyes, so I tried to rush them into the car...but I was too late. The man jumped, and within seconds we heard a horrible groan, a gruesome splat, and I turned around to see his body, exploded into pieces, covering the sidewalk. His bottom half had separated from his top half, his guts had been strewn around him, and his skin lay there limp and empty like a broken balloon. I turned around again to see my beautiful daughters standing there staring, their faces frozen in shock. I stared into their faces, knowing that I could never take away what they had just witnessed. There was nothing I could do to protect them from experience. I once again began to rush them into the car, so that we could leave this horrible sight...but I knew that it would be with them forever.
More and more, when faced with the sufferings of others, I find myself speechless. My own child, who is weeping because her first boyfriend broke up with her, a four year old who weeps because she knows her mom will hit her when they get home, a woman who was repeatedly raped by her uncle as a young child, a man coming out of many years in prison, who is terrified that there is no place for him in the world. I open my ears and my heart, and let them in-I nod and listen and hold and hug, I do what I can to facilitate healing, but I am often left speechless. Yes, I can offer advice and inspiration, yes I can relate to each one of them with my own stories of suffering, but there comes a point in witnessing where the only thing you can offer is love.
While holding a weeping child, while taking in the pain of others that I cannot take away, I want to weep as well. I want to protect each person from heartbreak, holding them in a cocoon of comfort, bringing them up from the depths. I want to get angry and find retribution for their broken hearts. I want to make things better. But that is exactly what I cannot do. I cannot go to the depths with any of these people, and there is nothing I can say that will take away the pain. I do what I can as an advocate, and then I step back into the role of mother. If nothing else, I can listen to them and love them. I look into their eyes and acknowledge their pain, with compassion. This is possibly the most difficult part of being a parent. To hold, to listen and to love, without expectation or need for control. To witness our children experiencing life, without the need to protect them from it.
Yes, we protect our children from violent images and language. Yes, we protect them from the influence of our own cruelty and sickness. We protect them from damage in the home, the family and in relationship, in the hopes that they will grow up with peaceful hearts. Limiting what our children are exposed to in our own homes is an important part of keeping them safe and bringing them up right, but we must do this with knowledge that in the blink of an eye, they will be responsible adults, living in a world full of experience. Allowing them to embrace the light and the darkness of life is not the same as teaching them that violence is ok.
The instinctual reaction I felt in my dream, to shield my children from experience, is a natural one. It is natural for humans to want to cushion themselves, and especially their children, from the pain of breaking, and the mystery of truth. But without that pain, without that breaking, without the transformative experiences that the world has to offer us, how far into our own depths will we be able to go? If we turn our personal suffering into blame, how will we know what to claim as our own? If we deny discomforts instead of digesting them, then how will we last when we are truly tormented? Pain is one of the many experiences that reminds us that we are in fact alive. Pain is the feeling that often moves us into places we never would have gone, filling us with holes that we can then fill with gold. As in the ancient art philosophy of Wabi-sabi, we take what is damaged or imperfect and make it extraordinarily beautiful. Pain, if viewed as essential, is just another wave in the ocean that will soften us, sculpt us and bring us into a fuller self. Pain is not the end of all things, nor the beginning of forever. It is simply the journey into the belly of the whale, where we search for treasures that will help us continue on.
Beyond protecting others from injustice, it is not our role in life to change suffering. If we try, we will make ourselves crazy, and we will teach those we love that feeling hurt, getting our hearts broken, and living the human experience are unnecessary and bad. But if we bear witness to their suffering, holding them as they weep, loving them as they scream and giving them the fullness of our attention, we can help them understand that they are not alone. We cannot take away or change the trials of the human journey, but we can help each other endure inevitable cracks in the flow of life and heart, just by saying, "I am here. I hear you. You will find a way out of this, and it will be beautiful."
"To drink of life is to drink of the miracle
and of the things that break."
-Mark Nepo
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