Someone recently said to me, “What happens when you’re the one everyone looks to for strength. And there is no one there to hold you up?”
I didn’t answer.
I can make up excuses as to why I couldn’t deliver, but I’m certain that part of my inability to offer comforting platitudes was because I didn’t want to go where they were.
My inner strength can be fickle when left alone too long. It forgets how to share. Used to the solitude, it struggles when put upon. Sometimes the resources deplete to a point of silence; like a wicked summer hail storm, you aren’t able to connect what’s actually happening as you’re watching it unfold before your very eyes…. and, usually guarded, heart.
Loneliness is a real place. Having traveled there and back on countless (weekly) occasions, it’s a destination not too anticipatory. There are always empty seats on the flight. Scary and vast and bottomless. A fear of detached nothingness that renders everything in life connectionless.
Well, what that feels like is a big wave that comes along and knocks you down. You find yourself lying on the bottom of the ocean with your face in the sand, and even though all the said is going up your nose and into your mouth and your eyes and your ears, you stand up and you begin walking again. Then the next wave comes and knocks you down. The waves keep coming, but each time you get knocked down, you stand up and keep walking. After awhile, you’ll find the waves appear to be getting smaller.
Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche, as told by Pema Chödron
And we’re here to be points of intersection. With touch, with sound, with words. And when we’re clouded in weather we cannot control or navigate, we recalculate. We pull up that trundle of reserves and push until empty. Lights flashing, we know we’re due for a re-up, but we’ve got to keep running on fumes. And when our faculties all start failing we reach for others. Because sometimes all we can do is hold each other by is by using our ears to hear their fears.
roadside yogi 