06/ 11/ 2017
For a couple months now, I’ve been doing work study at my yoga studio. My budget is pleased, as I get free yoga classes in exchange, and I am happy to spend more time in the studio community. Typically, I run errands, like picking up supplies or flowers for the studio.
Last weekend, I was asked to clean up the fire escape. In television and movies, fire escapes are where pivotal moments take place. They are tiny with just enough room to sit side by side. Sparks fly. Kisses or passionate conversations happen. It’s nice!
Then there’s the other type of fire escape. It’s more the size of a small deck, but really run down. This type commonly serves as a home to unwanted objects, trash or New York’s wildlife. I don’t like critters and I don’t like being dirty. But I smiled, put on some gloves and got to work.
I smartly tapped the trash cans with a broom handle to make sure there weren’t any creatures behind them. When a pigeon flew out at me, I covered my face in fear that I had suddenly became a character in Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds. I placed suspicious objects in the trash and almost contracted tetanus a few times. Then I discovered the pigeon’s nest behind the trash cans. That explained why that bird continued to circle suspiciously overhead.
It was scary and I was on edge the entire time, but I faced my fear of the fire escape and got the job done.
Taking on this task reminded me that I don’t like feeling uncomfortable. I’ve mentioned in other posts that my current job is ending on June 30. That’s less than a month away and I still don’t have another job lined up.
I am terrified of being unemployed.
Last summer, I picked up a book called A Buddhist Grief Observed by Guy Newland at the free little library in my neighborhood. Though I’m not Buddhist, I thought I’d learn something about dealing with grief.
I read through it again recently and several passages stood out to me:
“We need a middle way: not denying the actuality of our pain, while not identifying with it as our core self. If we think, ‘I am the one who remembers and dwells in pain,’ ‘I am the one who lost his wife,’ then it recycles again and again. Samsara. It is like someone constantly picking off a scab. When we have deep pain that seems not to touch others, we get sucked into this sense that pain is our deepest identity. Intense anguish feels as thought it were our private, secret, inner selfhood.
On the other hand, don’t avoid what is happening. Don’t try to bury your pain. Indeed, one friend advocated this to me as his approach and the approach of everyone in his family: ‘Keep your head down.’ Plow ahead. Bull your way into the future, without being waylaid by sentiment. Oddly, while this may seem like the opposite of identifying your pain, it is not. Hiding your head does not make it go away. Repressed pain returns, reborn again and again in new forms.” p. 31-31
“Sitting with Valerie’s [his wife] cooling body: looking at the pain is like staring at the sun. But pushing it away won’t help. We have to do what we can, feeling out what more might be possible. Keep your head up, your eyes open to see what is even a bit helpful—and then what might be another bit more helpful. As we get more able to watch pain with a bare mind, not identifying with it, we may see it slowly ebb. It is not a constant—white the opposite. ‘How I feel’ is not only difficult to express, it is also a fast-moving target. It is not disloyal to have moments when you don’t feel bad. Should I happen to laugh now and then, it is definitely not a sin!” p. 31
“To be human is to set sail for the next shipwreck.” p. 31
“Shock and pain are not a personal failure. It is cruel to judge ourselves so harshly; it is unhelpful to blame ourselves for being human.” p. 35
I’m feeling the pain of potential unemployment and a list of other fears that come with it. What I’ve realized is that feeling painful emotions isn’t comfortable, but shutting down and living in isolation won’t protect me either. It’s learning how to let the pain breathe, how to let it evolve through grief, so that eventually, you and the pain can move on.
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