Everyone has two lives

from: http://www.katrinakenison.com/2014/09/07/life/

"...And yet, what life hands us, again and again, is not the simple ease we ask for, but something different: challenge, loss, pain. What choice do we have, but to figure out how to accept all of it — the care-free afternoons; the charmed moments; the ordinary days; and, too, the unexpected blows that bring us to our knees, the news that makes us want to curl into a ball on the floor and weep. (Maybe growing old – or, rather, growing up – means realizing that there will always be charmed moments, even in the bleakest of times, if we’re attuned to notice them, and that there is simply no such thing as a charmed life. Not for me, or for you, or for anyone.)

So it is that I’ve spent this lovely, mild, gone-too-soon summer finding my way in territory that is at once brand new and profoundly familiar. I know from past experience that grief and grace are two sides of the same coin. That healing is always possible and that it happens in the most unexpected ways. That laughter and tears can share the same moment, the same breath. That there is light even in the darkest night. That faith and mystery are inextricably intertwined, bound by wonder. And I know that showing up and quietly doing what needs to be done in the moment is a more helpful response than either dramatic rescue attempts or worry. For me, perhaps the greatest surprise of the last couple of months has been discovering how much gratitude and sadness it’s possible for one heart to hold at once.

...Even so, finding meaning in a situation that seems utterly meaningless, random, and unfair is hard, slow work. The “new normal” keeps changing. It’s human nature to want answers and plans and promises. And instead we have only the present moment, mystery, and hope. (Of course, we’re kidding ourselves if we think any life is predictable, any outcome assured, any promise a guarantee.) But slowly, bit by bit, the incomprehensible becomes more manageable.

Surrendering to things as they are, we find a new way forward. Despair softens into acceptance. Fear of what might be in the future gives way to a desire to ease another’s path today. Meaning goes hand in hand with connection. And the one thing I know for sure is that we become our best, most compassionate, most resilient selves by stepping outside ourselves. I suspect we all do better when our hearts are fully engaged. And really, as we grow older, as things we love are taken away, one after another, what choice do we have, but to learn to give even more? To love even more? To bring more and more peace and more and more kindness into the world?

As Buddhist teacher Sylvia Boorstein writes in Happiness is an Inside Job, the small, deeply wise, deeply consoling book that has lived in my purse and that has nourished my soul all summer: “Perhaps [this is] the clue about the happiness inherent in caring connections. The frightened ‘I’ who struggles is replaced by the ‘we’ who do this difficult life together, looking after one another. Holding hands.” Yes. Oh, yes.

So, maybe it comes down to a simple fact: to live fully is to allow ourselves to be broken open time after time, even as we grow in awareness and appreciation of all the ways we are upheld and mended and supported by one another. This is life as it really is – so much goodness and beauty, so much unwarranted suffering, so many fragile hearts beating as one.

This morning, I woke up early, while it was still dark, and lay in bed for a long while, listening as the birds began their song, one solo voice swelling and then, within moments, joined by a full-scale dawn chorus. Just after sunrise, Steve and I headed out for a walk with Tess, pausing to marvel at the layers of mist draped over the mountains, at the clear, golden light above and at the sun breaking through clouds.   Later, drinking coffee on the porch and reading the Sunday New York Times, I came across some lines excerpted from a letter by Steven Sottloff, the second American journalist slain by ISIS.

Reading these words, words written in captivity and smuggled out by a former cellmate of Sottloff’s, my heart broke for this innocent man, for his grieving family, for the suffering that yielded such urgent wisdom. And now, sharing them here, weaving this small connection between you and me and a young man whose life was violently taken, my heart heals just a little bit, too. We each awaken by degrees, our bruised hearts softening and growing more supple as we learn just how much is at stake, how much we need one another, how much we have to offer, what a beautiful tapestry we make.

“Live your life to the fullest and fight to be happy,” Steven urged his family. And then this: “Everyone has two lives. The second one begins when you realize you have only one.”