Typically, when “Ohhh, fuck” happens—say, the police call to say your bipolar brother—your dearly dearly dearly loved bipolar brother who has been on an extended psychotic break—let’s say he’s been arrested, and your elderly mother is frantic, and the car won’t start and the kiddo is already late for a critical hair appointment, and that appointment is critical because your baby has a gorgeous head of Type 4B hair that must be handled TODAY, and there had been juuuuust enough money to get her to said critical hair appointment, and maybe-just-maybe, if you’re really lucky, and I am really lucky, these events confluence upon you within five minutes of each other...
And typically, when “Ohhh, fuck” happens—and arrests, cars not starting, and potentially missed hair appointments for 4B hair all count equally in my book—but when this typa shit happens: normally, very understandably, we resist.
What does resisting look like?
Always, it’s a no to what is.
And always, it hurts.
Resistance thoughts may look like: “This can’t be happening,” “What am I going to do?”, “I can’t do this,” “I can’t handle this,” “I’m gonna die,” or simply: “Nooooooooo.” All great options. Resistance also includes the attending sensations that accompany that flavor of thoughts.
More specifically, though, and this is an important distinction: resistance is identification with these thoughts and sensations.
When we resist, when we are identified with our pained thoughts and sensations. We’re rolling around in them instead of seeing them.
In other words, we are suffering.
***
I meant it, though, when I said I am really lucky.
If you’re reading these words, chances are that awful shit has probably happened, or is happening, or is about to happen, to you as well—which means that you, too, are really lucky!
And that, boys and girls and nonbinary children of the Goddess, is because we, lucky us!, we have the golden opportunity of making the “Ohhh, fuck” shit into “Ohhhh, fuck” joy.
Fortunately, we are as able as we are lucky. Even if we do not feel we are able: we are. You are. I am. We are.
Let’s go further.
***
How do we do this, though?
How do we make shitshows into joy?
Let’s start with what we typically do in the face of a shitshow.
Typically, we treat the show, the painful event, as if it is a bomb—let’s make it a stink bomb—that’s about to go off.
And so, typically, we panic. We run away. We Netflix. We eat. We defend. We curse the bomb, the pain it’s causing us. We make lists of things to do to make the bomb go away and make sure it can’t come back.
We resist.
Of course we do.
We don’t know, we cannot see, that the bomb actually is a child.
Wait—the bomb is a child??!!
The bomb is a child.
We don’t know we’re running away from a child, that we’re cursing a child, that that is what we are resisting. Our resistance, which is innocent, which is the best we can do in that given moment, clouds our vision and renders the child invisible.
***
And so, here is how to treat the “Ohhh, fuck” shit: be nice to it.
As you wonder if your brother will ever be okay, if there’s anything more you could’ve done, can do, for this person you loved so much growing up, as you feel truly helpless about your car:
Start mild.
Start with: Hello.
Literally, to the thought that is He’ll never be okay and I cannot live with that: say to it, “Hello.”
Breathe.
That initial “Hello” will soften you.
Now, say, “Hello, little one.”
We have to see the child while the child is still invisible, while it still appears as a bomb.
Our seeing, our kindness, will make the child visible.
Fortunately, it doesn’t have to be a strong kindness.
It can be a stammering, clumsy, frightened kindness. It can even be an angry, even an enraged, kindness. Even that’s a start, and that’s all that’s needed is a start.
***
Even a tiny wobbly bit will make the child visible to you. You’ll see a faint, shimmering outline emerging through the bomb.
And you’ll feel the child arising as a sweetness in your pain. As a calming. As compassion.
You’ll find yourself softening. In the face of your awful situation, in the depths of your pain, you will find yourself softening. Of course you will. How can you not soften as this beautiful child becomes visible by your kindness?
And you’ll feel something quelling. Something giving way.
And the bomb’s proportions, so seemingly solid only moments before, will soften to the proportions of a child, will give way to the child.
And we may find ourselves saying something extraordinary to the child. To our pain. To our thoughts. To the god-awful situation.
We might say, “I won’t make you go away.”
Sweet words like this make the child even more solidly present, really and truly here.
And now, you can see that this child is holding the remnants of the bomb, only now, your seeing has rendered it a very sweet little bomb, indeed. A bath bomb.
***
And now, you have the capacity to see that the bomb, in all its forms, is innocent and has been all along. It was your vision that had to clear. You can see that the awful situation—the arrest, the car—is innocent and has been all along. It was your vision, your judgment, that had to clear.
And with that clarity, you can see that the pain you are feeling is not coming up to hurt or haunt or taunt you, or for you to do something about. It is coming up only to be seen. You can see that that pain is coming up only to be redeemed, only for you to redeem it.
We may marvel at the bath bomb’s pretty colors with the child, who smiles back at us.
And when you redeem your old suffering with your seeing, with your marveling, with your kindness:
That suffering can take on its true-true-true form: tender, naked, unadulterated power.
Otherwise known as joy.
Greater joy than we’ve ever experienced before, right where it shouldn’t be, right in the midst of our greatest despair, our saddest and most helpless “Ohhhh, fuck” moments.
And what does that joy give us?
It gives us the capacity to be here, to be present, for more and more and more of life, without it having to be different than what it is.
It gives us the capacity to pray the best prayer I’ve learned to pray thus far:
Please let this moment be exactly as it is.
I would never dream of making it go away.
For I am the luckiest person ever.
***
Do you see the implications of this approach?
It means that more and more, we don’t have to be afraid.
If we will have the kindness—otherwise known as the courage, the audacity, the daring, the sweetness, the wildness, the maverickness, the genius and the brilliance, the gentleness—to receive our ruptures and problems and pain joyfully and joyously:
If we will be very very very gentle with our problems and our pain: then we don’t have to be afraid. Because there’ll be nothing to be afraid of. It is joy-in-waiting, after all, it is only stuff to be kind to.
And again, we can be shaking, tremulous, timid. Of course we will be. We’re dealing with an optical illusion—that stink bomb looks, feels, very real, and here we are, being kind to it.
But each time we practice—and this practice is the essence of Inquiry Meditation, is the height of nondoing—we get exponentially stronger. Our seeing capacity strengthens exponentially. And the optical illusion softens, gives way, and our kindness bears immediate and sweet-smelling fruit.
***
More and more, we will have the capacity to greet any and all hurt with quaking and courageous honesty, willingness, and compassion—for that is what joy is made of, is honesty, willingness, and compassion. They are the very building blocks, the very mitochondria and nucleus and fill-in-your-favorite-9th-grade-biology term, that make joy.
And with great grace, that hurt will blossom into its conscious form, which always feels really really really good.
And you will more and more know, bodily and truly and by your own sweaty, glorious efforts, that all is indeed joy:
The evident, obvious joy of things we like…
And the pain and problems that more and more be named, and more and more seen, as joy-in-waiting. A child that is waiting to be seen, yearning to be seen, praying we will see them this time.
***
This is what I came to know a few Sundays ago after I got Arden to her hair appointment and sank onto my bed, devastated, for sure; and willing, too. It wasn’t a big willingness, and not a strong willingness, either. But all that is needed is a little, and that little doesn’t have to be great quality, either.
As a matter of fact, I like to think that Grace holds our panicked dissociated, Neflixed, over/under-eaten willingness even more dear because she knows what it costs. She knows it’s cost us something to choose to stay instead of flee into doing of some sort.
I like to think she finds our meager willingness even more meaningful and, thus, she holds it even more tenderly.
***
That fruit, by the way, that immediate and sweet-smelling fruit, is literal miracles.
Things unfolded for me with such grace that day and in the coming days, or there was room for things to unfold for me with such grace, I think, because I created the room. All we have to do is create the room, just make the space, and life, or Grace, as I also call life, will do all the doing.
The fruit also is joy.
Our pain, all of it, really is joy-in-waiting.
How do we make our shitshows into joy?
We see them as joy already—joy that is waiting on us.
***
One really great question, though.
Why in the living fuck does the process of the child coming up have to be so difficult?
As in: why does all this beauty and joy have to happen via triggering and terrible situations we have to work soooo fucking hard not to react against and instead have to do the work of summoning the aforementioned courage and compassion?Why can’t that innocent child just show up and be visible to us immediately? Why do we have to work so hard for the child to become visible?
Here is why.
Because we need to do the grappling of seeing.
That grappling builds the muscle, the capacity, that is necessary to hold the frequency of the joy we are redeeming.
Remember that each time we do the good, nondoing work of seeing: we unearth greater joy than we’ve ever experienced before.
We get bigger.
And we need capacity for that bigness.
The Universe, Goddess, God, the Great Nothing: They all pray for our bigness. For our courage to be brave and to reach for evermore joy.
END.
P.S. I will share more about that rather remarkable Sunday in my next blog post, and I will write that post sooner than later. I wanted to share the whole story in this blog post, but that would’ve been a book. A good book, probably, but I know y’all don’t have all the livelong day.
P.P.S. For those good souls who’ve made it all the way here:
Liberation doesn’t come from reading words. It comes from practice. I say this because what I’m saying in this post, and pretty much what I say in all my posts, will resonate differently when you are practicing. By practicing, I mean saying “Hi” to your pain and being kind to it when it arises—what I described above and what I describe in many of my blog posts.
But! But, but, but:
Reading brings understanding, comfort, and reassurance, all of which are great softeners, great waymakers, for liberation.
We need these waymakers to gather the courage to reach for liberation, to reach for evermore joy., to reach for actually practicing. I need these things, too, to keep gathering my courage, to keep practicing.
So, keep reading. Keep gathering your understanding and comfort. Also, I really really really appreciate you reading my blog.
And in perfect time, at the exact time that is right: you will, we will, all of us, find ourselves practicing, too.
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