A rose. Think of it.
How like a rose we are.
Beginning as seed, gently, a bud.
How we open,
slowly,
never seeing our petals born;
never guessing when, at last,
the last
will fall.
And when we wither,
wrinkle and darling grey:
the beautiful rose that lived.
Think of it.
How easily we forget who we are.
Devine and growing.
Think of it.
Think of how lovely.
If I am not her,
that good and lovely girl in a box,
who am I?
Now that this body is alive
with the energy of all of life,
who am I?
I believe this,
but I believe the opposite of this, too.
I love you desperately,
I hate you just as achingly.
Both can exist within, but how?
But how?
I am bursting fire,
I am calm ocean blue.
I do not understand, and I understand entirely.
For one small me,
these feelings are large.
Too large for me to carry
alone.
The room glowed orange. And LOVE. A wooden carving of the word sat against the wall in my room, opposite my meditation cushion, on top of a painting of my favourite tree (the letters light up if I really want them to. I very rarely want them to.)
I’ve become increasingly frustrated with words and their inability to capture and express the absolute truth of the concepts they frame. Love is one of the best examples of that, for me.
Love, for instance, is on a spectrum, for starters. There are differing types of love, differing levels of depth, differing levels of understanding of it as a concept, differing levels of experience with it.
And here is the problem I have: LOVE, the word, is far too small.
It is too small to capture
and hold
the vast ocean
that love
truly
is
to me.
So I get a little frustrated.
Words, in general, are a little frustrating to me, because even people we share a language with will never know the exact meaning of a word according to our perception and expression of it.
An example. I experienced the most profound moment the other day, when discussing some things with my beautiful, spiritual counsellor. She is trying to help me work through some of my energy blocks, at the moment, but as we discussed a particular topic I found myself fumbling. I knew exactly why.
Words. They were vastly limiting us in a few ways: one way being our different perception of particular words (it seemed we weren’t quite on the same page). Another being the energy beneath the concept I was trying to express. The whole thing seemed far bigger than any means of communication we had in our toolbox to discuss it with. It was as if we were trying to catch a whale with a plastic fishing rod. It was just never going to happen.
I even said to her that I felt so frustrated because I couldn’t possibly express the depth of what I was trying to convey to her in words. This was a feeling. But it was also something so much more than a feeling.
I don’t need to capture the entire universe and express it in form. But if I did…words couldn’t possibly reach the heights I’d need to climb to pick that apple.
I wonder if there is any human tool that could.
I wonder a lot of things, actually.
Perhaps I’ll keep wondering.
Is it worth these precious breaths?
This fight,
this blame,
this game?
Is it really so important?
People die
(people who are loved)
and still we take for granted
life.
And we fight,
and we blame
in this game.
It’s just a game,
just a bloody game.
Just
a bloody
game.
Oh, the stories we tell
to amuse
and destroy
ourselves.
When the moon is full
they will remember:
the wolf howls
into the shining night.
And so do they.
I ache
for it all.
It is a war.
It is a world wide
war
announcing
the differing languages
of intolerance.
There is no place
for darling
in desire.
The sweet perfection
of you
must die
to know the wild
ecstasy
of me.
Cross the bridges
of my body
with your wandering
lust
and I will meet you in the air.
I will meet you in the air.
I tend to think that the root of all war starts with the individual. More specifically, the constant fights (and wholehearted agreements) we have—umm, with ourselves— about how good or bad, or right or wrong we are in relation to something or someone else.
But what is this inner chatter going on about, when, given the vast, unlimited nature of the universe: everything just simply is?
Everything.
It just is because how could it be any other way? All humans play by different rules: from countries, to cultures, to homes. And like the trees and plants we see dotted all about the place…no one is any more right than the other. It is humanity that places labels upon x, that judges x, that separates ourselves from x.
In my opinion: labels, judgment, and separation…cause war. The small day to day wars of: ‘that’s not what I believe, or how I would behave’. And the big wars, the ones with the bombs. I think we can all collectively agree on one thing, at least: we have really got to do something about those.
The problem is that our ‘ judgments, boxes and boundaries’ also keep us safe and functioning healthily, and so there lies the mind-numbing ache of life. The absolute chaos that is the human condition. Absolute chaos. (Did I mention the chaos? It’s kind of a bit chaotic, wouldn’t you say?)
Awareness of self (and other), compassion, understanding, forgiveness and empathy feel like the answer, to me, but our survival instincts (fight, flight, freeze) are so deeply ingrained. How do we evolve healthily and sustainably without suppressing real and actual biological needs? In other words, how do we achieve collective peace without blowing ourselves up via the suppression of our emotional and primal needs? We need to be able to freely express ourselves, and yet how do we do this when we are still under the shadow of such dense societal judgment?
And, that, dear bloggy friends, is the question I’ve been mulling over for quite some time now. Awareness of self has brought a great deal of peace to my life and the life of my children that certainly wasn’t there before. Where once I growled like the wild tiger Mum scolding her naughty cubs, I now take a moment, connect with my empathy, and calmly guide the little muffins in a way that won’t completely scar them for life. Then I go for a run. A long, long run and consider the painfully obvious fact that I am human and sometimes I just really want to roar.
We really are so painfully human. We all grow, learn, break, and heal at different times in our lives, and sometimes even radical empathy is a struggle for the most empathic among us. Perhaps I’m overthinking it all, but I really do wonder if we ever will have the collective epiphany of all epiphanies.
How to achieve peace, whilst also being everything that we are.
Is it possible? I hope so, but honestly…I’m really not sure.
Beautiful little flower.
Her petals close upon the darkening sky
and she sleeps,
opening again to the morning sun.
Searing heat tortures her softness.
Storms tear at her fragile frame.
Yet she keeps waking, opening.
Closing, sleeping.
She does not fight the weather that takes her,
she gracefully lives.
She lives.
And how beautiful she seems
to me
when she just
is
through it all.
brooke-cutler.com 