It's personal, it matters and it's real
Remember to remember to live while you can
There’s an accompanying meditation with this essay - a guided Tonglen practice, a palpable way of working with whatever we may be feeling in and for ourselves as much as for the suffering of others. Breath by breath, we feel into the difference we can make by directing our attention, care, energy and concern to bring relief for the benefit of all beings, ourselves included. As ever, I’m amongst feathered beings in flight, whose chorus you might hear - and hopefully enjoy - as part of this recording :)
Using words without thinking, acting without pausing, might be among the most wasted moments, often due to life’s torrent in a world on fire. Our attention is relentlessly dragged elsewhere, keeping us on a level of high alert that can cause us to disengage with aspects of life that might otherwise sustain us.
Pausing to feel isn’t easy when commotion abounds, when what needs to be felt is too raw to face, or when we think we don’t deserve or cannot afford to spend time feeling some of the goodness.
I have to remind myself all the time to take it easy, back up, stop rushing - look, listen, feel, touch, really engage with what I’m seeing and doing. Whether that’s the daily movements in my life or the news I’m reading or the sights I’m seeing, which might either horrify or uplift - we have to make space for both, for our sanity’s sake.
If I don’t, if we don’t, it’s a disservice to our own lives and the lives of those who the 24-hour news/BS machine can easily turn into a distant mass of abysmal and hopeless distant drama.
It’s not about you, and it is
I was glad to recently come across the poem, Think of others, by the Palestinian author and poet Mahmoud Darwish (1941-2008). Ever since reading Darwish’s poem, I’ve been remembering to revere and dedicate the merit of every moment of every day (when I remember, which the practice has me doing).
So often we, I, read or see something and it’s not long before we’ve been shuttled on to the next thing, either by our own restlessness or the haste of the mediums that make us spiral.
What a half hearted way of being that is, don’t you think?
Darwish’s words compelled me to do more than that, to take his words as a place from which to leap, to note my own, to make them personal, make the moments matter, make this life real. That’s the power of thoughts, words and deeds when we really engage with the impact that they, that we have through them:
Pulling weeds from the pot where the peace lilly grows outside my front door, I think of Ahmed and his cat Simba, farming on his makeshift rooftop garden while Gaza is under fire. Sitting down to eat a home-coooked meal and feeling my belly groan with satisfaction, I think of Sudanese families walking exhausted towards aid tents with no food to give. Pressing my feet into the Earth and reaching my arms to the sky, I think of my aunt, disabled by a stroke and dependent on others for every motion. Treading carefully over the ground rendered uneven by rainfall and heat, I think of my father’s silent suffering of hips and knees wounded by manual labour. Listening to the skylark above me as I sit outside beneath a clear sky, I think of children like Ayla who cannot sleep for the airstrikes and lack of shelter ripping up their world. Sweeping my freshly washed and conditioned hair into a ponytail I think of women in Palestine who don’t have clean water. Watching our chickens roam and cluck while hugging the cat, I think of Haitham, whose cat was killed when the violence began again. Feeling my heart judder and my lungs inflate as I sit to practice, I think of myself and the breath I get to breathe freely. May whatever I have and give somehow get through.
I’ve found it to be a simple, accessible and profound antidote to disconnection, disassociation and distraction. All the ways in which our attention, our humanity, is divided from ourselves and others - because it is possible to feel gratitude for the relative comfort of our own lives in a way that connects us to those who we wish could have but don’t receive the same (and thus encouraging us through a real felt sense to do whatever we can to contribute to a world where that might one day be possible).
As Thich Nhat Hanh said: “Engaged Buddhism means engagement not only in social action, but in daily life. You must invest yourself 100 per cent in organizing the days that are given to you to live.”
The I through which we see
The idea of guilt that comes from apparently centring ourselves when contemplating the suffering of others - whether that’s feeling intense sorrow or sharing the pleasures of our own lives with people enduring extreme deprivation - came up in last week’s Pal Solidarity Support group.
Every Sunday, a group of us come together to be with with the hope and heartbreak that we struggle to hold alone but amongst and alongside each other, feels a little easier to bear. It’s a space to share our rage, confusion and sadness, as much as the things and people - including the families we are supporting in Gaza - who give us cause to smile and laugh at the lighter side of life, hard as that might be to believe is real.
Is it enough, does it do any good, does it harm or hurt to share scenes and words from our comparably comfortable lives?
In our group, we talked of friends we are supporting, the Juma family and the Abu Dayer family, sometimes welcome seeing images of the moments in our lives when we think of them - when we come across a clear sky, a beautiful flower, plant a tree, spend time with our animals, hug our loved ones - all the while hoping, praying, agitating and advocating for their right to be free and feel the same degree of comfort, security and unconditional love that we are fortunate to do.
It’s not about me, I, we or you. And it is. Because the I is invariably the location from which we speak, see, and act. In that sense, we matter. In the relative and relational sense, how we show up matters.
It’s about connection as much as gratitude, about generosity of spirit, about widening the scope of our perspective, it’s about lingering longer on the sense (and insanity) of what’s happening to people who are at some kind of distance and, if we take time to really notice, closer than a fleeting thought will have us feel.
If not now, when?
While taking a break from writing this post, I read about, and read the words of, Hasan Essam, a university student whose dreams and future collapsed, in his words, because of the war, the genocide. On 20 April, he shared on his social feed, “Do you not like your life? Remember we are just trying to survive.” Hasan was killed this week.
Remember. Remember to live. Remember to care.
What else is there to say, to do. Words feel inadequate but as the people in and supporting Palestine prove through documenting, sharing, and breaking the silence and ignorance that their tormentors would prefer cloaks the world - they matter, their words, their lives, and the attention we give to them matters.
I see people asking, and I have myself asked, ‘what can I do?’ (and I mean people who are doing plenty of what they have the capacity to do), when those who have power do nothing, in fact do more than nothing, they do everything to destroy and be complicit in this brutality.
Bear witness, really engage with life, with your own and with the stories of those you read or hear about, fully give your attention, that’s where it starts. Turn towards the hope and the hurt, because we cannot heal what we do not feel, we cannot face what we refuse to see, and sharing all the ways we are cared for and comforted can be an act of aspirational reciprocity that lends hope where it’s dwindling.
Take Darwish’s words as a place from which to leap and make them your own.
Rather like the metta practice of extending a prayer for loving kindness towards all sentient beings is more than a sentimental repetition of words, giving voice - whether aloud in the moment or on paper as a note to yourself by way of remembering - it’s a way of attuning our otherwise overwhelmed and distractable minds and heavy hearts in desperate times like these.
As Darwish says at the end of his poem, live and give from the place of aspiring to be “a candle in the dark”.
It’s a reminder that infusing and revering every second of the life we get to live matters more than the enormity of events can lead us to believe. Actively making space for appreciating the sorrows and the pleasures, with ourselves and others in mind, is part of the work of making freedom a reality.
I say all of this to remind myself first and foremost, because I need boosting and nudging onward when all hope feels lost. But we cannot lose hope, even if and when we do, we need ways of returning and remembering - care in whatever you can. Show you care. Don’t lose heart. Make your hope active.
Tell me what hurts, tell me what helps - I’m here to hear it
If you could benefit from a safely held space to unravel, let rip, rage and roar, I am offering 1:1 spiritual care sessions rooted in the practice of deep listening, fierce compassion and self-empowerment.
Note that this is not a therapeutic or counselling service. My intention is to give you support, guidance, inspiration and encouragement to be yourself and find your voice. This means I create and hold space for you to be open, honest and your whole human self. For most of us, that involves breaking free of the conditioned impulse to be good, clever, and strong.
In these sessions, we spend time processing whatever it is that has you feeling stuck, disconnected, untethered or low, in life and/or work. We will also make time to celebrate the glimmers, the joys, the highs and the happy moments.
Further details and booking info, along with low cost options, are here on my website. If that resonates, get in touch. And if you know of others who might benefit, feel free to spread the word.
‘Til next time, take care, go easy, go hard - make space for it all.