Over a lifetime, inescapable sorrows are gathered. The pain produced wreaks havoc, scattering hope, and vanquishing lives.
Yet beyond varietals of denial and resentment, there are the third-way varietals of peace to be gleaned as the sorrowful gatherings are embraced for the fact that they ‘are’ (inescapable).
Beyond a place of our controlling them – we can’t – we rest in the acceptance of unacceptable circumstances beyond our control. Such an acceptance is wisdom for we have no other way of moving forward and ahead by faith into a destiny that chose us –for we did not, and never would, choose it.
But in choosing to go with a new normal, something more wonderful becomes us.
Life in the long run – the purpose of sustaining life no less –is to receive each circumstance beyond our control with a grace that absorbs and therein honors the pain of it.
Such a process is not hard, but it is NOT our human default. We typically are hurt by pain.
The process of absorbing pain brings with it a benefit as it deepens the heart and we enjoy a deeper spirituality within our humanity. What seems like a curse is destined as a blessing.
Sadness, truthfully, is beautiful. What might seem bizarre and even abhorrent is no less true. It is an ancient fact of
human experience written about by the mystics a thousand years ago, and ancients much further back than that.
As we embrace our sorrows, our anger is healed.
Griefs gather as we age, but aging is not a foe.
Our purpose as we age is to grow in grace – to grow and not to rescind.
Too many people kick against the goads, but just as much we can find our best life post-50. I can tell you my happiest years are in the second half, yet the paradox is it’s my first half being healed that brings me the most joy.
And it’s because I’ve learned the spiritual truth that this life holds nothing but pain, yet somehow that very pain is but the key that unlocks the door to the real joys of a life more abundant than most realize.
VARIETALS OF DENIAL AND RESENTMENT
The saddest reality of life is how many people never live the full life they could have lived.
Too many people are trapped in the varietals of denial and resentment. In my AA days 20 years ago, I so often heard it said, “Poor me, poor me, pour me another drink.”
Addiction is a bypassing of the pain that is better meant to heal us. In addiction, both denial and resentment run out of control – all because the pain seemed too hard and too much. The cycles of escape and anger should be their own evidence of the wrong path.
Pain is merely the antecedent of healing.
Denial and resentment are two undesirable ways of dealing with pain. We are forgiven for trying these two ways out – getting ensconced in them.
They are the world’s ways, how almost everyone responds without thought.
A THIRD WAY
There is a third way, and that way is key. That third way of taking the pain INTO oneself.
When we take grief in all its confrontingness, it overwhelms us. It takes us to a desperate place, a place where we are destined to reach out – if we are not afraid of others’ reactions.
My emphatic exhortation here is, GO with all you have INTO this third way.
When we open ourselves to a fearless journey of partying with the painful truths of our lives, those very pains prove their healing property as we endure them.
And that healing property is our hearts grow supple and vulnerable, more easily broken with compassionate empathy in the common bedrock of a symphony of pain that this life is made up of.
All of life opens up to us when we are no longer afraid of having our hearts broken.
*This article was inspired by The Pretenders, Back on the Chain Gang. I played this song on repeat as I wrote this. Long live music like this!
This is an updated edition of a post originally published on Tribework
Featured Image by günter from Pixabay
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