I cry a lot. Sometimes when I cry, I write.
ON EMPATHY AND SUFFERING
Pain creates empathy. Do you want empathy? Do you want to be connected to all living things? Pain and sorrow bind us together as humans; they also bind us to dogs and cats and horses and birds and the rest of the natural world. Eggs and flour are pain and empathy. With pain and sorrow, there can be empathy, a community of humanity, there can be a binding power or a binding mechanism. We regret, we fear, we despise pain and sorrow and suffering and sickness and death, but where would we be without them? We would not be humanity; we would be a bunch of unconnected humans.
We do share with each other also joy, triumph, and accomplishment.
Empathy comes from pain, loss, fear, and sorrow. Empathy is infinite and eternal. It can keep growing, forever. It will keep growing, forever. It will. Pain is as beautiful as joy. A cave full of stalactites and stalagmites is dark, wet, slippery, hard to see. Careful. It's scary, right? But you turn on a light in the cave, a bright colorful light, behind all the formations, now it's freakishly beautiful, uniquely mind-blowingly beautiful, right? Now crazy lights and shadows and contrasts. Pain is like that. Choose your own image, the night sky, a storm in the sky, big dark waves pounding a shore, heaps of snow in an abandoned cold place -- all scary, all freakishly beautiful.
Humans pass through birth, life, and death. We experience tragedy, betrayal, embarrassment, humiliation, depravation, hunger, misery, fear, sorrow, pain, isolation, loneliness, financial turmoil, loss of control, broken friendships, unreciprocated love, injustice, unrecognized toil. When we suffer, we can celebrate the empathy we are gaining, and how our heart grows so we can feel the pain of others.
There is something adventurous and risky about increasing our ability to suffer with or for others. Empathy is a portal to love and friendship with new people and new communities of people. As everyone suffers, everyone has something in common; everyone has something to talk about; everyone has an icebreaker at a party. Do you want to bet this is how people approach each other at the Oscars or the MetGala? "I heard your mom died." "I heard you have melanoma." "I heard you have rancid diarrhea." "I heard you lost your fortune to crypto." In ancient Rome, this is how they greeted each other: "I heard your brother was stabbed with a dagger, by a mercenary." "I heard your sister bled to death after severe thorn pricks." "I heard your mother was poisoned." "I heard Caesar wants to torture you to death." In ancient France, it was similar: "I heard your lover has gonorrhea." "I heard your aunt washed into the Seine." "I heard your landlady was crushed by a bucket of excrement being lowered from the sixth floor." "I heard a mapmaker squirted ink into your eyes."
I have felt my heart growing in its ability to feel pain for others. It is a wild and exciting feeling, not unlike foreign travel or riding a roller coaster. It's scary and it's also thrilling to suffer, to feel your heart open up radically and wildly. It's scary to feel that your heart can grow faster and faster, on its own, and that the heart's own, separate, autonomous desire is to grow as much as possible, even at the cost of great pain. It's scary to know and to feel that your heart is not afraid to suffer and grow, and regardless of the commands your mind or body give your heart, your heart will ignore them as its own destiny and desire is to grow big enough to swallow the sorrow of the whole world. How free your heart is, how scary, how thrilling that it wants to grow forever, and the only way to grow is to suffer!
It's scary and thrilling to realize that you have increased your ability to suffer, because that means you will suffer even more, until you get to a new breaking point. It's scary and thrilling, when faced with uncertainty or fear, to open your heart and mind and accept your fear and your uncertainty into your soul and spirit and organs, rather than to deny or suppress your feelings, or try to dim your emotions with drugs and alcohol. Accepting suffering feels like jumping out of a plane without a parachute. Sometimes the pain is so great you gasp for air. It's beautiful to gasp for air and be frightened and thrilled.
Great suffering is no less exciting than winning the Super Bowl, and the stakes are much higher and much more personal, and the gains accrue to you forever and ever.
When you go to the gym or exercise outside, you increase your muscle capacity or lung capacity. When you have a serious illness or when you have a loved one with a serious illness, your empathy muscles are activated dramatically. You might not fit better into your jeans on account of your empathy exercise, but your empathy muscles are getting fit and huge, and you are getting stronger and stronger in the most important ways.
When you get a new car, like a red Honda Civic, you probably notice how many Red Honda Civics there are on the road. When I was diagnosed with lung cancer with brain mets last summer, people came out of the woodwork to tell me about their loved ones with lung cancer, brain cancer, strokes, and all other manner of tragedies, chronic illnesses, terminal diseases, and painful hospitalizations. I learned about all kinds of people whose spouses or kids had died or been diagnosed recently. I never knew how many people had had their brains fried with radiation, how many people were missing parts of their skull, how many people had spent time in a neurointensive care unit. I heard about all manner of seizures, infections, deaths, amputations, chronic ailments, loss of capacity, and so on. It lessened my pain to know and to understand that we all suffer, we all are called to suffer, we all stand meekly before age and time and give in to their demands, we all share in this misery together. When you feel bad about your suffering, consider what a privilege it is to be earning or it is to have earned credibility as someone to whom a person might confess she or her loved one had a terrible disease and you seemed like someone she felt comfortable telling. When you are in pain, you are essentially wearing a sign that says, "You can talk to me, I understand," and that sign is printed in every language in the world.
These stories were from people already in my life, but I wasn't aware of their situation or suffering, because I hadn't bothered to inquire. My illness created an opportunity for these people to identify themselves to me, and for me to have empathy and credibility to share in their sorrow and exchange comfort.
ON DEATH
When you die, your loved ones will be OK without you. They will. They will. It won't be their favorite day or anything, but they will be OK.
You have lost people already, loved ones, and you kept moving on. Sure, it was hard to lose someone, to miss them, but you are OK. When your grandpa died, it was hard, but you were OK. When your mom died, when your dad died, it was tough for a while, very tough, confusing, painful, but you were OK. You went on with life. Eventually. You were OK. You are OK. You went on without your dad and without your mom.
Everyone in history is dead, as well as their parents and sisters and brothers and children. Everyone in history died and before they died, they lost a parent or spouse or child, or friend, or all of the above. They lived, they loved, they lost everyone they knew. They did. Everyone is dead, and before that their loved ones were dead. And they were all OK. Whatever they are doing now, wherever they are, whatever form they have taken, whatever energy they have become, whatever tree they have become, whether they are in in another world or have become atoms of energy, they are OK. Whatever happened to them, wherever they are, it's OK. Your whole life, all those people from history, dead, and yet you were born, you went to school, and you played the violin, and you played soccer, and you went to art camp, and you were OK somehow, even though everyone from history was dead. It did not stop your life, your progress. You did not stop laughing or learning, just because everyone from history was dead. You went on and on, like it was no big deal that billions of people were dead and that billions of people had lost their children and lovers and parents and spouses and friends and cousins and everything. You are so tough and so OK, you hardly ever thought about all those dead people.
Where did all those dead people from history go? Did they disappear completely? Are they annihilated? Are they still here, are they still there? Where are they? Did they go somewhere? Did they stay? Did they change form? Are we them, and they us?
When you die, your loved ones, they are tough, they will be OK, they will. It will be hard for them. They will be sad. They will miss you. You will be missed. But your loved ones are tough, they are scrappy, they are resourceful. They will go on, on and on, and on. Without you they will move forward. Life is so powerful, it's such a powerful force. That force will compel them forward. It will. They will be OK.
Your loved ones are smart, they are resourceful, they are scrappy, just like you. Just like you figured life out, how to do hard things, how to hold on, how to suffer, how to work hard, how to make ends meet, how to sacrifice. Everything you did, you learned, they will, too. Why wouldn't they?
They will be OK. They will be better than OK. Without you, they will eventually be fine, they will prosper even. They will. It's hard to imagine, I know. It's hard to bear, them without you. But it's true. If they were the ones to leave first, you would go on, tough as hell, and live on beyond them, you would always remember them, you would honor their memories in your word and deed. They will do the same for you. Because they can have joy and meaning without you does not mean they prefer life that way. Because you can have joy and meaning without them does not mean you prefer life that way.
Give yourself peace. Imagine your loved ones, without you, flying free, lifting their wings into the everlasting sky. They fly and fly, without you, and they honor you with their flight, just as you would honor them with your flight if they were the ones who were gone. They are still with you and you are still with them. You fly together, let's say. Don't be jealous that they are flying and you are in the ground. Sing for them. Clap. Sing. Praise their flight.
How high can they go without you? Very high indeed. So high. Apparently you were not the key ingredient to their form of life. That's hard to bear, right? Set yourself free. Soar without me, sweet ones, soar over the firs and aspens.
In my imagination, I'm so jealous they are without me. I'm sad. I'm bitter. This is hard.
You will never be forgotten, Scott. You will always be there in their hearts and minds. As long as one person somewhere remembers you, smiles to think of you, you will live on and on. You will not be lost or forgotten. You will live on, bound up in the sinews of their hearts, in the cellular activity of the mind, in the electricity of the spine and the body, in the memory of those sacred places where you spent time together, that's where you will be, forever bound up in sounds and smells that will always remind your loved ones of you. You will always be there to guide them and to comfort them.
There is nothing that can diminish you. If your body stops breathing and is put in a box in the earth, that will never diminish you or your influence. You will always continue on in the same magnitude and strength of influence that you do now. Nothing could or can or will diminish you. You cannot be, you will not be annihilated. You will always influence your loved ones. Forever. Forever and ever.
They will be OK, and you will be there with them. And they will be there with you. All that light, all that life, all that energy, the memory, the nostalgia, the inevitability of nature, the infinite nature of organization and life and intelligence, always there in some form, one form or another, always there in some way in an ongoing celebration.
This will never change. Never never.
We cannot see it, we cannot prove it. We know it is. Where did we come from before we were born? Before we were born we were already there, we already were ourselves, prior to being born. We already existed, before being born. We were not created from nothing. We were always there in some form, waiting. Those who have passed on are not gone, they have changed forms in a way we lack the intelligence or vocabulary or experience to speak of. Everything has always been and will be.
There is no need for fear. Fear is a story based on a made-up premise.
You yourself, my dear self, will be in the midst of your own adventure, you shall fly across all time and space. You will be in the middle of the answer instead of within the question.
You had your turn at life, you have had your turn, you will have had your turn. Everyone gets their turn. The turn, for everyone, comes to an end. And then it's time to do something else. That's all.
Oh, my dear self, be strong. You have always been hiking around and up in the fog, since forever. You have been down all the paths that were for you. climbed all the trees, explored every cave, looked off every edge, from all the angles, That can never be diminished or replicated. During your life, during your turn, you have had the full experience of everything, the full dose, the complete dose. And then you go on to something else. Everyone gets the full dose in her turn, in his turn.
Fear is a story, a made-up story. When you were young, your parents moved once, twice, three times, more. You changed grades every year, schools, you got married, more than once, you got divorced.. You got sick, and you got better. You don't have to know exactly what comes next to know that you will be OK with whatever comes next. Whatever comes next will be OK, it will be another chapter of the adventure. You have always craved adventure in the deepest truest sense. This is what you want, this is what everyone wants, what everyone has always wanted. Everyone who has been and will be, will also take, has also taken, this adventure. Everyone.