continuing

while something in us feels we cannot

To my fellow seekers,

I’m writing this to all of you who find yourselves trying to live a life that feels worth living.

This week I observed my 61^st year of having been born into this mysterious world. Something in me seems surprised still to be wrestling with how to participate in whatever this is in ways that feel worthwhile. Like many of us, my life to date looks very little like I thought or hoped it would as a child.

It’s quite something to continue to fall awake each day to experience such profound disappointment. Something in me frequently feels heartbroken about how the world is appearing. It seems for so many of us that our longings to experience loving connection and a sense of belonging and acceptance so often go unfulfilled.

I’ve noticed that something in me often relates to living as a set of tasks that we must do – like living is a serious assignment we were given long ago. An assignment for which we surely are being graded – an assignment for which something in me feels that I’m failing.

For some time now, that aspect of me who is trying to carry this assignment feels we cannot go on. I’m sensing that they feel utterly exhausted – spent – despairing. I feel the weight of their defeat on and in my chest like an old leaden apron that the dental hygienists used to lay over me while taking x-rays of my teeth.

Something in me is so sick of the endless buying and selling and competition that fill our days. Something in me cannot accept how difficult it is for so many of us to be in relationships that feel safe and nurturing. Something in me cannot accept how we so often encounter disruptions in our abilities to sustain meaningful connection due to our personal wounds and traumatic reactions to the world.

For so many of us, the combination of our biology, conditioning, and circumstances frequently evokes painful emotions of fear, grief, confusion, shame, anger, and profound loneliness. Somehow, we continue to want and need more. Today and every day I find myself longing for more satisfying contact with people who see, accept, and appreciate me for who I am. I recognize a deep thirst to give and receive what feels like an innate warmth and tenderness. And most nights I fall asleep feeling that thirst has not been sated.

My capacity and my intentions so often feel irreconcilably far apart.

And yet, somehow, I find myself continuing – falling awake into another day, again longing for warm and tender contact. Somehow I keep opening my heart and mind to the risk of more pain while trying to soothe this primal thirst.

And, along with these familiar companions of disappointment, despondency, and despair, I’m also aware of a constant, spacious stillness. It’s as if I’m made of a warm and tender vitality that persists here without any effort on my part – a wellspring of something that nourishes and upholds me – all of me with nothing left out. This experience has me recognize that no matter how lost and hopeless something in me feels, I’m being held and sustained nonetheless.

How can these experiences both be true? I don’t know. But they consistently appear to be so for me.

If you relate to any of what I’m describing here, I hope you find some comfort in being seen, understood, and cared for.

Somehow, we are still here. Somehow, we are still longing for warm and tender connection.

Like fireflies in the night, may we each find at least a few others who recognize our kind.

Lovingly yours,

Ken