Guest House July 16, 2010

This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.

A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.

Welcome and entertain them all.
Even if they are a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still, treat each guest honorably.

He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.

The dark thought, the shame, the malice,
meet them at the door laughing,
and invite them in.

Be grateful for whoever comes,
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.

-Rumi.  Translation by Coleman Barks.
From A Year With Rumi. San Francisco: Harper San Francisco, 2006.

For me, what Rumi is writing about here is what I refer to as “staying with it”—letting myself feel whatever emotions I’m feeling fully, however negative they might be, and staying present with them rather than trying to avoid them or turn them into something more easily bearable.  That doesn’t mean that I completely surrender myself to them, because I do maintain my perspective, but I try to separate the two: on the more immediate level I can let myself fully experience whatever negative emotions are there, while on the higher level (with better perspective) I’m aware of what I’m allowing myself to experience and why it’s happening and whether or not I should act on it.  And I know that it will pass, because everything does, the good along with the bad.  Sometimes transience works in my favor, and sometimes it doesn’t.  Although nothing lasts forever, everything does have its rightful time and place, and it’s all I can do to strive to live whatever is here with me at any given moment.

Departure May 14, 2009

On the Thursday afternoon we got back from silent retreat, Julie and I were standing in the checkout line at Rainbow Grocery when she got a call from her supervisor.  I stood idly examining things on the shelves until Julie kicked me and mouthed “Sarah just got laid off.”  She went outside to talk on the phone and I finished buying the groceries before going out to find out what the heck had happened.  She told me that six of our coworkers had been laid off on Wednesday—Sarah the only attorney, along with our receptionist, office manager, communications coordinator, development director, and asylum paralegal.  I called my supervisor when we got back to the apartment, and she took us out to dinner that night to talk things over with us.  We were basically in shock and couldn’t understand how anything could function with a third of the office gone.  (I still don’t have an answer for that.)

The whole experience distinctly reminded me of when my dad got laid off from Kodak in November 2001.  The aftermath of layoffs had lost its immediacy after all these years, and I’d forgotten just how much they suck.  It was hard going into work on Friday and seeing a couple of the people who’d lost their jobs, and knowing that I hadn’t gotten to say goodbye to so many.  I’m starting to think that closure is a myth of modern life.  I don’t think the extent of the whole “economic downturn” thing had quite hit home for me until Thursday, either.  It reminds me that nothing is stable, that security is an illusion, that people’s worlds can change without a moment’s notice… that everything ends and that endings often come before we’re prepared for them.  The ideal, I think, is to spend my whole life saying goodbye—to spend it appreciating everything to the fullest extent possible and recognizing that each moment is totally inimitable and will never be lived again: to live in a constant state of arrival and departure.

The Fourth Down November 17, 2008

“   I
let the day go by,
    I
always say goodbye,
I watch the stars from my windowsill,
      the whole word is moving
            and I’m standing still—”

(The Weepies)

When I run out of actual work to do at work (which is usually only on Fridays), I’ve developed a habit of opening up a new email and typing whatever’s on my mind, and saving it as a draft. I’m up to twenty-five or so right now. One of them is entirely devoted to memories I miss—the actual subject line is “Memories I Miss (often perversely, but not always) (in other words, this will be an unabashed nostalgia fest).” I’ve written about this before: when I keep myself busy, I don’t have time to miss home; but when I have spare time to think, the missing creeps in. I’m okay with it as long as I keep it in check. Lately I’ve been getting hit by random bouts of longing for Eastwood 4, for the Canisius chapel, and for all the other miscellaneous places where I’ve unexpectedly found myself feeling completely at home and at peace.

I know that I idealize it, though. I know this rationally, when I think about it—things are always better in memory than they were when I lived them. I guess that’s essentially how nostalgia works. I try to remind myself that things weren’t as good as I remember them being, but it isn’t always very effective.

I’ve been trying to remember a time when I wasn’t missing someone. I have to stretch my memory back and back and back… I must have been very young. When I was a little kid, the only people I had to miss were my grandparents, and that was just because they weren’t there, not because I could never see or talk to them again. My first grandparent died when I was 4; my first close friend moved away when I was 12. Losing people starts young.

And then it just keeps going.

The worst part about college graduation was the anticipation of drifting. I knew it would come, because it came after high school, even though it took a couple of years to really set in; and I spent the last month or so of college in utter dread of it. I really, really, really don’t like losing touch with people—I’m not sure whether it’s worse when it comes suddenly or when it happens over time. But it sucks. …And it means that I can never go back, to that time that felt like home, because the place has changed and the people have changed and gone, and I’m not even sure where to look anymore. Is this what adult life is? —Trying to cope with the aftermath of realizing that nothing is stable?