About one year ago, I made this picture of Split, an ancient town on the Dalmatian coast of Croatia. The Mediterranean sun was reclining in the sky, smiling tender rays into a baby winter. My heart was swelling. You can see my shadow in the bottom-left corner, joined by another. At the time I was deeply, profoundly, more than I had ever felt before, in love. And now I am not. For a time, images like these haunted me. For a time, these memories arrested me.
When we come out of a love, one reaction is to want to stay in that love, to dwell in the past, or least the stories well tell ourselves of the past. But while this photograph may be actual — at least the print of it I gave to my grandmother was — one cannot live in a picture. My ego and neediness longed for that security, but I knew it was not the way. And so, with great consideration, I endeavored to live in the present, to free myself of the fetters of the past and the locked room of love lost.
However, as you know, it is not only treasured photographs that remind us of what was; the evidence is everywhere. Facebook. Your Gmail cache. A smell, a sight, a time of year. All of these index what came before. The memory mosquito sucks. You wince.
To become angry, to become frustrated, to become resentful is so easy. As animals, we’re inclined to evade. Memories hurt. You don’t want pain, so you run away.
“You can’t catch me, feelings! I can think fast!”
And so you resist these memories that spring up. With that you create a separation within yourself. Heartbreak appears gangrenous. We cut off limbs of our lives. We resent the one we loved for making us feel this. We are victims. But this is not the way.
Emotional digestion, unlike the gastrointestinal variety, is far from automatic. We must be with that rawness, the part of ourselves that is blown apart. This simple awareness allows for emotional evaporation. The cure for the pain is in the pain.
Rumi says that this mind is a guesthouse. Despair, calamity, disaster, we must great them with laughter. Even if they take everything, they may be clearing you out for some new delight. Be like melting snow and cleanse yourself of yourself.
One of the greatest lessons I have learned this year is to stop resisting and analyzing and blockading myself. Where once grumbles of resentment would be pushed away (and thus looped back), I now simply watch these thoughts float by. In that quiet, be unlocked.
Recent Comments