January 26, 2023
Soft
I used to drive myself crazy (literally!) trying to synthesize the world, to have the pieces fit together, to have it all make sense. I wanted to frame things to make the not-okay seem okay, somehow, like it fit into the scheme of things which, as I’ve learned in therapy, is a particular problem I’ve had for a very long time, this notion too that I have to hold it all. But I don’t have to—what a thing! Instead, I have to let it be, which in some ways is harder than trying to hold it all, but in other ways, so much easier.
I wrote the above with several random incidents of violence in my city in mind, such upsetting events which, it occurs to me, have same effect that terrorism does, the terror part. A sinister cabal really couldn’t have planned it any better than the perpetrators of these acts of violence. (I think about too the anti-social nature of protest against public health restrictions last winter, how these more violent actions are born of the same vibe. Sowing mistrust, uncertainty, and fear, and suspicion of our fellow human beings.)
I used to think that the bad thing would end and then there would be a period of calm. Perhaps this what a person is trained to think who came of age in the 1990s, didn’t read the newspaper very closely, and never imagined that anything that happened outside of a five mile radius have anything to do with them.
A thing I’ve said lately to a few people, in regards to parenting both toddler and teenagers, is this: It’s hard. And it’s hard because it’s hard, not because you’re doing it wrong. There are no hacks.
And I’m starting to realize that this is true about life itself, actually. It’s hard. And it’s hard because it’s hard, not because you’re doing it wrong. There are no hacks.
All of which is another way of saying (I’m sorry!) that “It is what it is.”
But it is!
I have become more cognizant of how I meet the moment, greeting hardness and anger with the same. Greeting violence with fury. And fearfulness, stoking division. No, I want to be constructive. I want to be brave.
“If you look back at history or you look at any place in the world where religious groups or ethnic groups or racial groups or political groups are killing each other, or families have been feuding for years and years, you can see…that there will never be peace until somebody softens what is rigid in their heart. So it’s necessary to take a big perspective on your righteousness and your own fundamentalism when it begins to kick in and you think your own aggression and prejudice are reasonable.” —Pema Chodran
I want to soften. I want to keep being soft.
