I’ve heard all the platitudes about God and the Universe. I know the mind is everything and my life goes the direction my thoughts go. I know I should be grateful for all I have because I am wildly, abundantly cared for and loved. I know I am made of stardust and that the Universe conspires on my behalf to fulfill my deepest desire for love and happiness. I know I am an infinite being that expands forwards and backwards and contains worlds within worlds. But sometimes all of this isn’t enough and life feels way too fucking long. Sometimes I just wish it were over. Sometimes I don’t want to pull myself up by my boot straps and come through the pain. Sometimes I want the pain to take me. I want it to stop right here, right now. And in those moments the first thought I have is, “You’d better stop it or you’ll fuck up all the positive energy and goodwill you’ve been working toward. Stop it or the Universe will turn its back on you.” But that thought only lasts a second because then I think, “What the fuck? Seriously?” The Universe is that fickle and unforgiving? The Universe can’t handle my sadness and confusion and exhaustion? The Universe who designed me to be deeply empathetic and infinitely loving doesn’t have the patience for me to be confused and sad and lost? Am I seriously not allow to just feel badly and doubt myself and my life without everything coming to an end? This, I can’t believe.
I believe there are an infinite number of chances. I am infinitely loved and cared for. I am infinitely forgiven. I am infinitely accepted. I am infinitely flawed and infinitely perfect. I am infinitely kind and generous and loving. I am infinitely sad. I am infinitely everything. I contain it all and so I experience it all. I surrender to it all. Yes, I have doubts and I am unsure and life feels waaaay too long sometimes. Mostly I have no idea what the fuck I’m doing and most people are too busy to care about my pain because they are too busy trying to strike their own balance between the platitudes and their sadness and their infinite love. And that is how it is meant to be. As Ram Dass says, “We are all just walking each other home.” Home to ourselves. Home to our sadness. Home to our infinite love. We are stumbling around like crazy people, changing from moment to moment, and still, we soldier on. Still, we love. Still, we cry. Still, we try.
Don’t let platitudes, no matter how good, make you feel bad about you sadness. Sadness is important. Sadness is the container for joy. But that doesn’t really help when you’re feeling sad, or more than sad, does it? No, it’s not helpful at all. So let yourself feel your sadness. Let it take you down into the dark caves beneath the earth and heal you. Let it works its way around you and through you. Let it comfort you and heal you, because if we’re being honest, sadness and grief feel good. They strip everything away and leave us bare. Sadness leads us to healing. And isn’t it really all about healing? Isn’t that what we’re all trying to do? Heal from the fear? Heal from the betrayal? Heal from the wounds so deep we’ve been cut in half? Heal from the exhaustion of living and loving and hoping with our whole hearts? Yes. That’s what sadness does – it heals. So the next time you are in pain and life is feeling too long and platitudes start creeping in, know that there is infinite patience and understanding waiting for you, holding you. Infinite depths that will carry you down and clean you out and stitch you up and wrap you tight. And when you are ready you will slowly ascend and find your place, once again, in the brightness of day where all the platitudes in the world make no difference compared to what the darkness of pain has done for you. So let the grief come. Let it wash over you and carry you away. Cancel your plans, run a hot bath, put yourself to bed over and over and over again, for as long as you need, until you are healed and ready.
You are infinitely loved and cared for, and that’s the only thing worth remembering when sadness arrives.