Thoughts on what I've learned

When I was 27 years old I was invited to an annual convening called Authentic Leadership in Action, led by the friends and followers of Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche. Over the next four summers, I learned to meditate. I met myself. I became myself. And then the Executive Director stepped aside, or was pushed aside, or some confluence of forces arose, and ALIA was over.

Executive Director transitions are always a big deal, but for an organization rooted in authentic leadership and dharmic teachings of egolessness and the pain of change, it took on layers upon layers of meaning.

A naive little burgeoning Buddhist, I thought - how could this be? How are these enlightened beings subject to the same infighting and mess as the rest of us mortals?

At the banquet on the last night of ALIA the year she was leaving, Susan gave remarks. She stood at a podium, her white curtain bangs framing her soft lined face. Both loose and so immovable, like all the teachers there were. Like they could float on their backs in the sea for hours, undulating with the waves, but impossible to pull under.

I sat on the edge of my seat, hands in my lap, tears in my eyes. That was my stance every moment I was at ALIA. I was so eager, so ready to absorb what these wise teachers had to share. Every word, every lesson. I couldn’t imagine what piercing truth that she, our fearless leader, would say on this laden eve of transition.

She spoke for just a few moments, thanking everyone for building this container together over 14 years, reflecting on the journey. And then to conclude, she said:

“I think what I’ve learned is that all that really matters is good friends, good food and good love.”

I was frozen, baffled. What? This renowned Buddhist, steeped in Zen, great wise student of the concept of no-self, of the suffering that comes from desire and attachment, of the pain that results from clinging and grasping?

“MATTERS”??? I thought you mf-ers said nothing is supposed to MATTER! What about asceticism, moderation, the moment to moment practice of letting go? Friends and food and love? Is that what the monks discover after years of silence? Is this where the right path of truth leads us? To some trite saying mass produced on TJ Maxx mugs?

Ten years later I was standing on Wyoming Avenue one winter afternoon, waiting for my son’s bus to drive up and deliver him. I was on the phone with one of my best friends, as I was for hours every day then, sobbing underneath my sunglasses, because I wanted to get a divorce and hadn’t accepted that I could.

“Is this good enough?” I cried to her. “Is this good enough?”

And then, like a shadow across a threshold - there was Susan.

Good love.

This marriage was good enough. But it wasn’t good.

Seven months later, divorce well underway, the clarity and necessity of the decision I had wrestled with so agonizingly now just a drip from a gutter. The storm had passed. The answer had arrived. And I turned 40.

It got me thinking - can I now, like Susan did at that last banquet, reflect on what I’ve learned? Have I earned that right yet? No memoirs, no tell alls, no manifestos. Nothing like that; goodness, no. But just… you know… a few thoughts?

I’m divorced. I’m 40. I’m the Executive Director of nothing, there’s no podium in sight, and no one has asked me for remarks.

But as my therapist told me once, as I was tiptoeing around approval - hers, perhaps, but ultimately my own - at a certain point you have to authorize yourself.

So, here goes.

I’ve learned that if the answer isn’t here yet, the answer isn’t here. When I was 9.5 centimeters dilated with my first child, after having turned into an animal on a street corner waiting for our Arecibo cab to come, after having swayed in a shower for an hour making sounds that originated in some land before time, writhing with the kind of pain that has no metaphor because it is in and of itself the metaphor, I sobbed to my midwife… “Is it time??? Can I push now??”

And she said, “honey, when it’s time to push, you won’t ask me.”

Or maybe what I’ve learned is that if you can’t hear a “yes,” it isn’t there. If you’re sitting on a bar stool at a club, holding a G&T in a sweaty plastic cup and you wonder “hmmm, do I want to get back up and dance to this song?” - you don’t. When the song is right, you’ll just start to dance.

So if you’re sitting down to meditate, and all that happens for 20 straight minutes every day for weeks is that tears and snot leak from your face, soaking the front of your shirt, and you wonder “why don’t I know what to do yet?” - just wake up the next day, and sit again. You can’t hurry the answer, nor could you possibly miss it.

I’ve learned that being absolved from making a decision, trusting that the answer isn’t a fossil that needs to be excavated by a crack team of archaeologists but just a horizon you have yet to reach, is the most electrifying grace you’ll ever receive.

I’ve learned that it’s all information. “I can’t get a divorce” is information. Just as “I can’t stay in this marriage” is.

I’ve learned that the most freeing and empowering and beautiful and relieving thing you can say to someone who is in the midst of an Anguish Period is - “its just information.”

I’m not sure how my sister friends who held me during my Anguish Period knew to say that. Maybe it was something the goddesses whispered to one of us in a dream. Maybe it was an Instagram meme or something Tara Brach wrote. But somehow we found our way to it, and through every manic, terrifying, heart wrenching moment of the darkest days of my life, the truth of it was there because they reminded me of it. This is information, Jess. This is just information. No rush to solve. No assigning meaning. Just seeing what’s there. Like a gentle, patient mother combing the rat’s nests out of your hair. Knot by knot, as long as it takes.

My friends are proof of a higher power. I was blessed, touched, to learn this young and to know it all along. But wow, there is something about getting divorced and turning 40 that makes the depth and sanctity of those friendships feel mystical, karmic, guided by divinity. Because it’s not just that they can see and hold and even untangle my misery. That would be sacred, indeed. But it’s the merging of that mercy with the laughter that makes it feel holy. Grace plus unbridled wildness, rowdiness, the kind of fun you pray your children experience one day. The kind of fun that radiates, that stops other people on the street. I’ve learned that joy and sorrow come from the same spigot; if you shut one off, you’ve cut off the other. My friends are the ones who show me there’s no limit to how much can flow from this faucet. I’ve learned that clutching your friend’s hand and saying, “what if we had never met” is the fastest way to cry.

I’ve learned that sex is a conversation. And that the only conversations I care about having are the vulnerable ones.

I’ve learned that what makes me whole is in service of my children’s wholeness. What makes me happy might not make them happy. What brings me joy might not bring them joy. But finding and holding onto what makes me feel whole - solid, rooted, nourished, alive - is the most important thing I can do to nurture their future relationship with themselves and others.

Everything I learned started with learning from and with my mom, and one of the most important instructions she ever gave me, a child so sensitive and so acutely attuned to the world’s sadness, meaning a child routinely bullied, was - look for the pain. No one ever seeks to hurt you unless they learned hurt. If you can truly live in that constant state of expansive forgiveness, not only are you on the path to enlightenment but also, there is no way you will ever not win. No enemy can withstand your compassion.

But imagine my shock in learning that you yourself can be the bully too. That there is no getting out of this life without learning hurt, and that it is inevitable that you’ll turn that hurt on someone else. A stranger, someone you love, someone who has something you want. And of course - your own damn self. You can, and you have, and you will bully yourself. But to learn that that expansive forgiveness and bottomless compassion can be applied back to you, that the enemy of your own creation can’t withstand it either? And that, wait, hold up - any enemy is always an enemy of your own creation? Absolutely fucking wild.

I’ve learned that fascists can become President, that people can shoot children, that racism is the defining force in our country, and that we are watching the end of humanity due to greed. I’ve learned that the only life I am willing to have is one in which the money I have to earn to survive in this capitalist trap is earned through the effort of making a saner and healthier and more equitable world. Not for my kids’ kids or for any distant faraway future, but for this one right here. Because my life is richer, and juicier, and more fun when I devote it to our collective struggle rather than running on a treadmill alone, chasing the eternally ungraspable carrot of consumption.

Solidarity isn’t some burden, nor is it some lofty, elite place that only the cool kids get to inhabit. You’ll never get an engraved invitation in your mailbox asking you to join the good fight. (I’m learning right now, as I write this, that we don’t call it the “good enough fight.”) It will be a million little opportunities that feel small, throwaway. You’ll think - this postcard party isn’t the revolution! This march isn’t the one my grandkids will ask me about. I’ll wait until it matters.

But I’ve learned that activism, or whatever label we give to the work of creating less sadness and suffering, is actually extremely entitled and selfish. You’re saying: I am important. Me showing up here is a big deal. How I spend my time and how I make my money affects lives and outcomes and right now and the future. I’m not an accident of nature, just here to bop along on this carefully constructed track of least resistance, grasping for pleasure and avoiding pain. I can do better than that.

I’ve learned that you can. And, who knows, catch me in another 40 years and maybe I’ll feel differently - but right now, I’m going to use a word I try to stay away from, and say that I think you should.

I’ve learned that it’s possible to abandon yourself. I did it once. I did it because I was confused and desperate and in the slimy cocoon of my own transformation, and it was dark in there and I really just didn’t know which way was up. I heard the calls from within the building of my body but I turned the volume down. And later, in the grief and shame and sadness of reconciling with myself, I realized that loving presence has never and will never desert me. But I’ve learned that I have to be brave enough to turn towards her. And that might mean changing plans, or doing something that disappoints someone, or something that feels or seems tragically out of character - like standing up and leaving, or quitting a job, or telling the cab to pull over and let you out on the side of the road. But I’ve learned that the only loneliness I have ever felt in my life has been when I’ve shut out a part of myself, and while I have compassion for her in those moments, I want to be conscious enough to not let it happen again.

I’ve learned that pandemics are possible, and that what you face about your life and your deepest yearnings while you are inside on day 35 or 98 or 143, fearing death and, worse - death in life - is, well, information.

I think I get it now, Susan. You just got to the point a whole lot faster.

Nothing matters. So make it good.