On Monday, Chris and Maple were run off the road by a school bus on their way to swim team practice in Stowe. They were on the Mountain Road where the speeds are slow and the hills and curves are many and when the bus overcompensated after driving over a snowbank and culvert pipe, Chris had to choose between getting hit and driving off into the opposite snow banked ditch. Many things about this incident are incredibly fortunate including degrees and angles as well as Chris’ competence and responsiveness. They are both rattled, but whole, as are all of the kids who were on the bus. They were close to flipping and landing on my people and well, thank god for seatbelts and snow.
Our old Honda Pilot, however, is a bit worse for the wear and as a vehicle that is completely paid off and has over 200K miles on it, chances are that it will come back as totaled. Such a bummer, and yet, of course, just a car. We have been taking such great care of and pride in that car these past years; replacing the timing belt this summer and feeling confident that we can get another 150k miles out of it before putting it to rest. Just goes to show I suppose.
Chris said to me on Monday night as we were licking our wounds and holding each other close that yeah turns out attachment really is suffering to which we both gave a little snicker and blink. But the message is not in resisting attachment as far as I can tell, but rather see it for what it is. It has taken me a long time to wrap my head around this understanding. That the suffering isn't necessarily something to be avoided but rather allowed in its own way. In fact, it is quite possibly in many cases a sign of having done right in having let something deep into our care and tender regard.
And I am not really talking about my car here am I? Cuz as much as that stings, it is truly nothing in the face of the wholeness and health of my people and people in general. That’s not it. I am thinking much more right now, and often, in terms of loving and letting go and growing and changing and all of it so real and so big in the face of the unpredictability of the moment-to-moment inherent risks in being alive. It’s a lot and my feelings are right up there at the surface. I keep replaying in my imagination the moment when Chris had to choose to steer off the road with our girl in the front seat and on the side that was going to take the impact. He stretched his arm out in front of her as you do when your heart is sitting in the seat next to you and you have everything to lose.
This is alive for me in my asana practice these days as well and part of why I think I get so much pleasure out of making my own self so sore on my mat. I am keeping myself right up close and often even inside of my own physical and mental discomfort working on postures and shapes and actions that are quite difficult and oftentimes provocative for me. Places where I have fear and a lot of mental chatter and that require everything of me in the moment. And it makes my muscles sore in this way that is pleasurable because it reminds me that I brought myself up to that place inside myself where I tested and grew my limits, where I loved myself even in the face of my fear, and where I learned when to wait and when to leap, and where I didn’t abandon my wholeness.
One of the ways that Christina and Sam and I first began really reconnecting this past year was in the hours after practicing together texting something like: so fucking sore. And then followed by long threads of exactly how sore and where and maybe a little bit of what. And that is fun and special but really just in that, it is mostly us saying something else entirely which is more along the lines of: we did that. I did and you did and I see you in that and I want to be seen in that too. I did something that brought me right up to my edge and that asked me to stay awake and feel my feelings. I have some skin in the game and while it surely isn’t all or nothing, there is something to lose and that is the point. It isn’t that attachment is suffering so I better keep attachment at a distance. It is instead that attachment is suffering and the suffering of having given my whole heart to it and then having one way or another lost it all, in the end, is proof of something so much bigger and grander than my small individual fears and heartache.
And that is what I mean when I consider the space inside the breaking. It is not the breaking down, even though maybe it is… if that is what it is going to take to break open. Break open to love and to connection and to the suffering that comes with whole-heartedness. I want to feel that as much as I want to feel all of my muscles fatigued from their good and honest efforts. I want to wrap it up at the end of the day knowing that I didn’t leave anything on the table. I loved and maybe I lost but I also gained and holy fuck am I sore.
