Saving a Life and Constant Loss – John Calvi April 2019
A few ideas have been swirling in my mind for some time now and maybe it’s this late night in the cold early spring that finally brings these ideas together to make a whole. I will have to write for a while to see what comes.
I’ve been thinking about saving a life, the large and small ways this happens. The large and obvious ways – the surgeon carefully doing her work, the medicines that took so long to create, and the fireman bringing out the last one from the burning house. These we know in critical times and witness our strongest hopes realized.
Then there are the small ways in which lives are saved. These tend to be cumulative and perhaps small at the time. But they, none-the-less, account for the ability to continue, perhaps when all seems lost. That one adult who speaks to the injustice of a child, the teacher who sees the obstacles to a student’s learning and poses just the right question to commence a liberation from a burden too few were aware of – these are also lifesaving. And perhaps more numerous in day-to-day life than the larger forms. Collectively, they make a bridge to the next day and the next. A life is saved from the perspective of only loss, only despair, and only expecting the worst.
These two forces are in constant motion, relentless and causing the renewal of hope and possibility. They collect and gather to make a foundation for belief, action, and philosophy. And such things are seductive and intriguing.
Martin Luther King claiming - “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” is a powerful idea that we hope to be true with all our hearts.
This is energy for the long haul of hard work, the hard work of justice seeking, of peacemaking, of healing all manner of pain and confusion. We need it for the road, for doing the impossible. We lean into it like the strong arms of the elder, of faith, of safe space and time.
Another reality is also in constant motion, relentless insistence, and universally experienced all at the same time and this is constant loss. Not everyone is saved by the surgeon, or the medicine, or from the burning building. Not everyone finds the teacher, the elder who knows just what to ask. Some people are lost to the terrible wounds of life and can’t go on. It’s hurts too much to know, to feel, to witness. This may bring layers of death from the total loss of life to the small tight little perspective where no joy is allowed, no mercy lies on the horizon, what has been taken is lost beyond what feels possible to grieve and recover from. This reality also creates belief, action, and philosophy that are as sturdy and strong as any made by humans.
These two ideas feel to be opposites and indeed their results clash against one another in every aspect of personal and public life. Having straddled both in my own life and seen this in so many others, I cannot claim that one is more real or less honest than the other. Both are true and clear, both have meaning and entire cultures based around them like foundations and fortifications.
Your experience – meaning what happens and how you respond – can put you in both camps and the confusion maybe the most common confusion of all people.
So, what’s to be done? The answers are numerous at all times and in all cultures. There are stories telling us to be brave, to believe one way or another, to batten down the hatches, to open our hearts, to give it over, and to expect nothing better. And no doubt you may be engaged in just that practice right now as you read this- the belief that has carried you this far is…. But what of the pain that belief doesn’t cover, the pain underlying all no matter what?
Were there one simple answer for each person, it would have been found by now. I would love to tell you that thinking this or believing that, taking this action, or that path is the one sure way to relieve the conflict between the lifesaving we know and the heart stopping pain we also carry.
I do know about refuge and making safety. I know about attending to the immediate for recent hurt and old hurt that has been released to the surface. But here I am talking about the life long conflict of the deep experience of living and how it might be carried, how it might be pondered.
Only one pattern occurs to me – know as much of all of it as can be known over time and be in awe. I have seen the meaning of the birth of a child and the delirious joy this brings. I have also seen the loss of a child, which is the most difficult grief in the world. Or perhaps it’s the matter of true love discovered, received, lived in lushly like the perfect home found in one another and then comes the end – be it death or betrayal, it’s gone, always and forever. These two possibilities live together closely for everyone in the world. One cannot be secured without the other becoming a possibility, that’s just the nature of a difficult reality no one wants to ponder.
Whether these remain one reality and the other a possibility or whether both become known- they can only be survived by living with and knowing both, plus being in awe of how stunning, how beautiful, and how fragile the whole thing is.
Some of you have stopped reading because it’s too awful to imagine until it’s absolutely necessary. But one way to be careful of life is to know this stunning bit of creation is more fragile than we can know and that we do not have ultimate power over what comes, terrible as that idea is.
Using less drastic ideas, what do I mean by knowing and awe? To feel feelings deeply and have them in plain sight, even if only briefly, before doing the more typical human response of contracting all feeling, thinking, and actions in the face of great pain– can save our minds and the paths of healing from long lost wanderings in the rest of our lives.
Feeling deeply, allowing the feelings the space and time needed to know what we carry can be difficult work. Generally, the effort and circumstances necessary are very individual. What do you need to feel loss deeply? Do you need to cry? Or tell the story? Or be angry? For the most part, this isn’t taught anywhere. It’s a kind of freedom given a bit more in some cultures than others. And in some places, it’s not allowed children at all. Do we remember that children are our emotional equals?
And being in awe? What madness could this possibly mean when all is lost? Right, this is hard to know, to hear, to practice, I know. If we can take a moment, maybe not right away, or today, or any time soon, after some monster has shown up in life to wound us greatly and stand back and ponder the great circle of life. Maybe think of our entire life thus far and see this part as one piece in a much larger creation that continues, we might, if we are not hurting too much in the immediate, be able to be in awe of what has happened and if the sun is shining, perhaps, to glimpse it’s meaning.
Does hurt have meaning beyond just hurting? Yes, but it’s easier to see this later. Maybe it’s even a good idea to be old. Surviving a long time, looking back on something from the calm quiet of today may allow us to see that pain is always more than just pain. It might be awful and stay that way and cause us to spit at the thought of it ever. There is also the chance we know what it meant in our lifetime and thereby relieve some of its intensity, another reason to be old – this all takes a while.
So, there it is- life is beautiful and hurts, sometimes beyond what we think we can bear. There are probably ways to survive the hurt, but the underlying stuff contrasts with the goodies in life. This is confusing in a long term way that tends to be quiet rumbles of doubt beneath our daytime smiles. One needs enough time, space, and quiet to be with such things- to know they are more than they appear to be at first. Our response can vary over time, so that hurt can become less. That’s good to know.
