By Jenny Gomez, MA
As the world begins to open up, I have reflected on some of the highest and lowest moments of the past year and a half. There have been moments when sadness and fear were so strong it felt as though things might never be ok again, and then, there were moments of immense joy, connection, and gratitude –moments when I was deeply immersed in happiness in such a full and wholehearted way. As much as I preferred the latter experience, the truth is, pain and joy will always co-exist in the lives of humans – they always have, and they always will. While certain experiences might be more comfortable and more welcome than others, we simply cannot escape pain (though I am sure we can all admit to trying SO HARD to avoid the hard stuff). I am reminded of a quote by Buddhist teacher and author, Pema Chödrön from her book When Things Fall Apart: “Things falling apart is a kind of testing and also a kind of healing. We think the point is to the pass the test or overcome the problem, but the truth is that things don’t really get solved. They come together and they fall apart. Then they come together again and fall apart again. It’s just like that. The healing comes from letting there be room for all this to happen: room for grief, for relief, for misery, for joy”.
We tend to believe that if we are experiencing pain it means we have strayed from the path in some way, that something is wrong. In truth, pain and suffering are just so … human. We spend so much time trying to avoid pain, avoid the things that scare us, avoid the chaos, and yet, these experiences are so intricately intertwined with that it means to be human. If we understand this, we can use our mindfulness skills and be truly present with the full spectrum of our lives. Mindfulness teacher Cory Muscara shares that we can be empowered by the knowledge that we can withstand pain and not be broken by it. He says we earn the ability to believe this by “…walking through the fire, allowing ourselves to experience the difficult parts of being human and seeing that we can be with this, too”. Yoga teacher and writer Julie Peters also captures this this idea when she writes “difficult times in our lives can break up our story of ourselves and reveal colours we didn’t know were there, like our resilience, our compassion, or some great desire that has thus far never been fulfilled…when we learn to snuggle up with the experience of brokenness, we are able to face our fears”.
In true DBT fashion, there is such value in holding space for both pain/difficulty, AND connection, joy, meaning (and so forth) – welcoming everything that comes along with being a human. Of course, I want to acknowledge how hard this can be when we are in deep pain. That said, as we continue forward into the rest of this year, let us try to cultivate a sense of acceptance and curiosity for allaspects of our human existence.
If you are looking for an example of the above idea, you can watch thisGolden Buzzer moment from America’s Got Talent, where a contestant reminds us that difficulty and happiness (whatever that means to you), can co-exist. *Please be aware that this video mentions cancer.
Resources
Stop Missing Your Life: Cory Muscara (Book)
Images
Kleen, J. (2018). Waves. UnSplash. https://unsplash.com/photos/4fvS9uU1Reo