Two years ago... yet still very true

"If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did, and it never will." -- Fredrick Douglas

The Buddha taught all life is suffering. There is only change. Permanence is an illusion. And, the Buddha was, at least partially, right. There is always suffering, but there is also joy, and laughter, and ecstacy, and bliss, and playfulness, and fun.

I am a collector of people in my way. I carry a village in my bag. Sometimes the village inspires me, supports me, and lifts my steps as I walk into tomorrow. Sometimes the bag is heavy and pulls me down. Some days it would be easier to put down the bag. Sometimes I lose a day (a week, a month, a year, a decade) staring into the bag and wondering why I am still here to carry it.

I can be dragged into despair unspoken, grief unfinished, a past incomplete, the path not taken, the people now gone.

If I look up and look around, my life is brilliant. I am surrounded by love, friends, connection, meaning, mission, purpose. But, the other truth is also that my life is filled with loneliness, missed opportunities, lost love, disappointment, and grief.

Which will I hold up as my lens through which I see the world - my sorrow or my joy?

Perhaps, I am trying to hold the contradiction - to reject the either/or and embrace the both/and. Or, even better to live in a world where many multiple truths are happening all at once.

Where am I right now in my life? I've awoken from a slumber - a soma-induced period of comfort, thinking my battles where in the past, and the struggle had passed me by. And, so I feel awake, energized, ready to re-enter the struggle - and the universe provides opportunities and I am reminded of the sweetness of the process. I re-enter the struggle - and I know I am once again awake. But, being awake also means feeling all of the pain, and while it is the pain that woke me, it also feels like at some moments it may overwhelm me. I feel myself living on an edge. Teetering. And, desperately trying to build new support systems into my life - and feeling too deeply the lost of any of these new connections.

What is next? I act as if I am awake for good. But, I have not captured the taste of the future yet. Perhaps because I am savoring the present; perhaps because I fear I will find the future difficult to digest. And, there is also the option of returning to sleep - to finding some remnant of the life I was brought up to live, but that seems even more unlikely than falling into an inescapeable despair.