I had a friend who was a poet. I felt he was closing off to me and I asked if I had hurt his feelings. He replied, “I only have one feeling, and it’s always hurt.” He was a difficult and complex person and yet everyone wanted more of him. This wounded soul asked nothing from anyone but to write and be left alone. Bob Dylan once said, if he wanted happiness, he wouldn’t have been a poet. Both Dylan and Jim Storm avoided adulation because they knew it created binding contracts their creativity could ill afford.
Obligation is not a show of compassion as much as it is a desperate clinging to something that makes us feel secure.
I, on the other hand, could never share my broken heart because I was afraid to know it. I remained buried under the excess weight of my belly. Hence, I remained so protected I couldn’t heal. My wounds festered and became sore to the touch. So, I avoided bumping into this inflamed pain and would seek comfort in other’s approval. I suppose this let me feel I was securing my place on the planet. And because I wanted others to value me, I was forever the overconfident clown. I believed that if people loved me, I would be indispensable to them. This maladaptive grasping for security assured I was always getting hurt, always disappointed and forever let down. The more I grasped, the emptier I felt. The more I sang for my supper, the greater my resentment grew. I created lists of everything I did for everyone. I created resentments when those gifts were never returned.
Because I could not feel my hurt, I went right to blame and resentment, fixating on how no one got me. All of my performing, joking and hiding myself was actually a great burden for me to carry. I would avoid going out, because I had this inflated idea of ME to uphold. I couldn’t just show up as myself, could I? It was like spinning plates to prop up this façade anyone but me could see through. What was I protecting inside?
I was a wounded kid who grew up in an environment that I never felt strong enough or big enough and so I was always compensating. I was forever trying to grab on to everything and anything in my world that gave me purpose, worth and value because I didn’t feel those things for myself. I ended up as something of an emotional hoarder. I wouldn’t allow space into my life because space seemed to remind me, I wasn’t enough. I would hold on to other people and try to extract their love and praise and when I didn’t get it, I would hold on to the resentments. With no trust to let go and allow space, I was unable to see anyone. Space affords perspective. Without space my mind was a jumbled mess from which only need and resentment grew. Rather than feeling an inner wealth that I could share with others, I walked around constantly disappointed in their lack of following my directives. I was asking way too much of my world
I had a dear friend who was dying of cancer. One night after a party he through with his settlement money, I asked why he never laughed at my jokes. He said because he felt coerced into laughing at them. He didn’t feel there was any agency from him I was requesting. I began to see that people didn’t trust me because I didn’t trust them. I didn’t trust space. And I mistook emptiness for a bad thing. Rather than lack, emptiness can be seen as room. I was skillful enough at the art of speaking that I kept everybody giggling and appropriately focused, but I was also not giving any space for their feelings. It has lately become important for me to touch into the emptiness I fell feel inside. It’s important for me to become familiar with feeling emptiness and see it as an opening. From a meditation point of view, every experience we encounter is good. Awareness is the essence of realization, as is taught. The greater our awareness, the more agency we have in life. Awareness is born of confidence, and in turn engenders confidence. Confidence allows us the strength to offer rather than take We’ve all heard “it’s better to give than to receive” but that always felt like a burden to me as though we’re giving up things we need to please or appease others. But when we give if we are giving appropriately, we are letting go and letting go creates space both for us and for those to whom we’re giving. And the greatest gift we can give is our acceptance, which is our awareness turning toward them with the space for them to be as they are. There moments of contact are precious and more meaningful than all the things we clutter our mind with.
We cannot gain self-worth through external means. The things to which we cling are only distractions from the real work, which is to find what we need by building our spirit. That is certainly what I have been looking for and what I am committed to now in the new year. Be the one who loves you. It is human nature to want those who possess themselves. Conversely, it is also natural to avoid those with excessive needs that aren’t addressed. We can sense that pit of need which actually manifests as demand. We demand, cajole, manipulate in order to fill a space that doesn’t need filling.
Maybe we are the very one to heal our broken heart. And from there we have a full heart to share. No one owes us anything. But we owe ourselves all the love we have.
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