Proving I Never Have Nothing
Even as, in the end, that’s all we’ll take with us—nothing.
Today I had nothing planned on which to focus my post. At other times in my life, that would have panicked me. It no longer does. I take it as a fun challenge now, to sit down, blank screen, blank mind. Okay Universe, you may begin; watcha got?
Fact is, there is always something to write about, because there is always something to think about (even as I’m trying to not think so much!).
Writer’s block appears to be a myth, or an excuse—another way of not putting in the necessary non-effort for writing. Maybe some writers find themselves up against imaginary walls because they’re trying too hard to write something. Good writing, not that mine is, mind you, seems to come with no effort whatsoever.
In the drafts section of my dashboard, I have about 30 drafts of essays in various stages of completion, but none of those felt right to finish for today. Maybe later, maybe. Today’s world is giving a lot of us a lot that could be thought about, for sure. But I wasn’t thinking about anything in particular.
And there is always something to feel about.
That’s been a big thing for me of late—feeling the whole catastrophe of life and trying to make sense of it as part of my lifelong practice of living a life of meaning, purpose, and excellence. My Dad died in March of last year after our nine months together as 24/7 life/caregiver/caregivee/dying partners. Four months later, in July of last year, my life was blessed as I simultaneously became both the father of a beautiful bride (in partnership with her amazing fiancé turned husband turned son-in-law) and their wedding officiant (how’s THAT for a spectrum of emotion packed into one afternoon—beautiful as it was?!?). My life as a Hospice volunteer has allowed me to bear witness to others’ dying and deaths, including the recent death of my first “field” patient whom I’d come to know well and even loved. I have been honored and humbled to have been asked to officiate at the patient’s daughter’s wedding (they will become my sixth couple I will have married! Tell me I’m not blessed. All still married btw—it’s a part of my contract, to stay batting 1000 with the marriages I’ve officiated. No pressure if you’ve been one of the five so far…well, maybe a little pressure.).
More feels.
My family’s experienced the vanishing and death of a cherished, 14 years-long family member in our pet Yorkie, Sammy. Summer is on the verge of breaking full, and though it’s no longer a favorite season for me (as it once was when it provided the much-needed rest and rejuvenation following the end of a school year), it does make our home pop and sparkle—to say nothing of the upcoming pool parties and BBQ’s that we enjoy. My wife Kristin and I look forward to and enjoy being outside tending to our community of plants, ponds, insects, worms, birds, squirrels, rabbits, dear, coyote (all wild except for the plants we cultivate—100% organically), and anyone else who comes to take part with us on this land we are temporarily borrowing and stewarding. The Mariners are having a good season so far (but we’ve been here before sooo…I’ll check back in with you come October). Our national politics has unfortunately become the highest trending reality TV, available 24/7 on a channel nearest you—I won’t get started down that rabbit hole here; suffice it to say, my life IS absolutely better off than it was from Jan. 2016 to Jan. 2020 (but he who remains among us, in all his felonious glory, reminds us each of how low the human character can fall juxtaposed with how bright the better angels of our nature can become again, at some point soon). Although I don’t like watching much TV, we started re-watching the greatest TV series of all time: The West Wing (I own the entire CD set! Yeah, an unabashed TWW geek in the room! Want to make something of it???). I needed to remember what politics, political leaders, and government service could look like, even if it came solely from the genius pen of Aaron Sorkin. My grown children and their significant partners are thriving and we revel in each other’s company as often as we can. And we have a special trip coming up, with two very special people in our lives, to Palm Springs—yeah, I know, Palm Springs, the dessert, in July. It’s how we roll!
So much to feel.
SO much.
Every day I still wake and practice gratitude for the life I live because I know I live in a special place, at a special time, with special things and people in it, while way too many others are waking to trauma, war, starvation, poverty, abuse, homelessness, chronic health ailments, climate disruption, and all the other evils humans continue to wage on fellow humans. I feel all that, and deeply—much to my own despair. Empaths are like that. The important thing for me, though, is that I go there. Because I am cognizant of the privileges I have, and the beauty that surrounds me, I’m also growing a stronger sense of social justice; inequity issues including racism, bigotry, and hypocracy; and human spirit/compassion advocacy. I’m on a quest of becoming a better, more informed and skillful, ally. To do that, you have to know, if not truly go, to where the pain is. And one never has to go far to find the pain.
It is said “the longest distance in the world is the distance from your head to your heart.”
Boy, whoever says that sure has it right!
It’s a matter of about 8 inches, right? That distance between our brain and our heart? Even though we biologically “feel” pain in our brains (as it receives the pain stimulus from elsewhere in order to register “OUCH!”), all pain settles in the one place in our bodies capable of holding and metabolizing such pain—our heart. My heart’s been both full and heavy lately. Which is odd to actually say out loud because I think this is how we are actually meant to live if we actually want to live with kindness and compassion in our lives—if we actually care at all for other humans, animals, ecosystems, and Mother Earth in general. We should live more often in the space of full and heavy hearts. Maybe we’d treat each other better.
Biological fact about the human heart—even though it can be full and heavy, there is always, always space for more. And counterintuitively, when more gets added, even the heavy stuff, things become lighter. Things always become lighter with heart.
It’s okay to allow your heart to break, how else can the light get in? And how else will your light get out?
I look over at my table and see the copy of Voluntary Simplicity by Duane Elgin1 that I’m almost done reading. As part of my Alchemy, I’m trying to live a more simple and minimalist life. I’m reading a chapter a day from Dr. Will Tuttle’s The World Peace Diet.2 I see the volume of poetry by Charles Bukowski’s The Pleasures of the Damned3 that I’m making my way through—at least one poem every day, oftentimes more (there are about 300 of his poems selected for inclusion in the book!). I have my next volumes queued up ready to be read (more on these later—there’s always more!), and I have my daily go-to’s sustaining me through the year: A Course In Miracles, The Tao Te Ching (currently the David Lin translation4), and multiple volumes by John O’Donohue at the ready. Always John O’Donohue.
Brief aside: I wanted to include a short poem by Charles Bukowski so I randomly opened the book. I’m including his poem “hug the dark” below. I kid you not! THIS was the poem that opened. You tell me something’s not going on in this Universe!
I’m also finding quite a few interesting and interested people, fellow writers on Substack, who are writing about life from their own perspectives that have been illuminating, thought-provoking, intellectually challenging at times, emotional, and meaningful.
So there’s been a lot of feeling happening. And this is a good thing—even as a lot of that has been painful. It’s allowed me to go deeper into the nature of pain in relation to suffering. Life has a way of teaching us about pain and suffering—I remain an ever-present student. I don’t give myself a choice otherwise.
This is my life! Your life is different, but no less the real. Every moment new and different; many calm, some chaotic; many joyful and happy, some devastating and sad. The amount of suffering or joy we experience from life is exactly proportional to the judgments and opinions we layer upon the reality of the world as it exists in its ever-present nowness. Perhaps there is something to what Charles Bukowski will say to you as well below—when it comes to life, in all its glorious and stark reality, maybe we are best advised to learn to just…slide with it all. Surrender to the moment, allow what arises to arise (spoiler alert, it will anyway), and simply slide. I live but only the moments that I directly experience—there are a trillion trillion other moments I do not experience, so I suffer or gain joy from absolutely none of those. Some of those trillion trillion, the smallest of fractions, are being lived by you—should we come to know each other, and share each other’s journey, perhaps we could come to care enough about each other so that your joy can become mine, and so too your suffering. And vice versa.
I would be so lucky.
This is what evolved this morning to think about, to feel about, in order to meet my self-imposed deadline of posting every Friday morning. My two year Stackiversary was June 2nd—this is my 159th published post; I’ve come to rely upon this routine of writing and posting as I continue to wean myself from the highly-structured and calendared life of my former school principal self. When I got up this morning, I knew I hadn’t yet thought about anything in particular—so I trusted my heart to come up with something rather than the nothing my brain had.
“Always go with your heart” is usually pretty good advice. (So is going with your gut—the two, btw, are not unrelated.) Becoming more trustful of one’s heart is a good space to be in. In living a heart-full life, there’s a lot of pain and darkness to live through; but so can one find joy, and laughter, and light.
In the end, I trust it was enough. In the end, that’s all that really ever matters: not what’s in our brains, but what’s in our hearts.
💕
Always and Ubuntu,
~ kert
And with Ahimsa!
🙏🏼
PS: Of course, this is all just my opinion, y’all! Don’t take my word for it.
Hug the dark - Charles Bukowski
turmoil is the god
madness is the god
permanent living peace is
permanent living death.
agony can kill
or
agony can sustain life
but peace is always horrifying
peace is the worst thing
walking
talking
smiling,
seeming to be.
don’t forget the sidewalks,
the whores,
betrayal,
the worm in the apple,
the bars, the jails,
the suicides of lovers.
here in America
we have assisinated a president and his brother,
another president has quit office.
people who believe in politics
are like people who believe in god:
they are sucking wind through bent
straws.
there is no god
there are no politics
there is no peace
there is no love
there is no control
there is no plan
stay away from god
remain disturbed
slide.Elgin, Duane. Voluntary Simplicity: Toward a Way of Life That is Outwardly Simple, Inwardly Rich. Second Revised Edition. HarperCollins, NY. 2010.
Tuttle, Will. PhD. The World Peace Diet: Eating for Spiritual Health and Social Harmony. Tenth Anniversary Edition. Lantern Books, NY. 2016.
Bukowski, Charles; (John Martin, editor). The Pleasures of the Damned: Poems, 1951-1993. HarperCollins, NY. 2007.
Lao Tzu; (Derek Lin translator). Tao Te Ching: Annotated and Explained. SkyLight Paths Publishing, Nashville, TN. 2015.
A great analogy that. Poetry doesn’t take one out of the water; indeed, that’s the Source of all poetry—the waves, the tide, the currents, the ripples, the boiling. The best of it, and from writing it, does allow one to breathe.
So many truths you have shared… need to re-read for a deeper dive and let your words settle in. Glad to have found your page