Stay with the Grief – Deconstructing Yourself
M. W. Taft
Today I saw images of students leaving their school with their hands raised in the air, hours after cowering in fear and terror in barricaded classrooms. Nine dead and twenty-seven wounded in the tiny Rocky Mountain town of Tumbler Ridge. The mayor, Darryl Krakowka, said, “I have lived here for 18 years. I probably know every one of the victims.” And this in Canada, which often seems to us Americans like a bastion of sanity and normalcy in comparison with our madness.
I see a little boy covered in bandages and burns in a makeshift hospital in Gaza. He is the same age as my son. My imagination is too good sometimes. And there are so many images to engage. But you already know that. You’re bearing the weight too. I want to rage at the bad guys. But really there is no other side. I love my extended family, and half of them are evangelical Christians and MAGA to the bone.
We deal with it in all the usual ways. Checking out into baking shows or maker videos. Doom scrolling until it becomes a blur. Getting overinterested in the details of rock climbing. But as meditators, there are subtler, more insidious ways to check out and numb the pain. Spending a little too much time soaking in body bliss. Feeling like we have a special ability to connect with all sides of a conflict. Seeing the world as a meaningless dream that we are floating above.
But this is not what practice is for. Meditation has been training you all along to stay with the discomfort, stay with the trouble, stay with the pain, and to not collapse. Every hour on the cushion was a preparation for this: to hold it all, or as much as possible, and not go numb or freak out or fall back into distractions, including the distraction of thoughts about reasons and blame. What I am saying is not some kind of metaphor. It’s literally the training. And it’s exactly this capacity that is called for in our moment.
Engagement in a democratic society means we have to show up. We have to have tough conversations with people we don’t agree with. We have to keep working when there’s no guarantee of a good outcome. We have to sustain that effort over months and years, when we’re tired or worn out, or would rather be at soccer games and birthday parties.
There are important opportunities coming up. Midterm elections, marches, strikes, school board meetings, conversations with neighbors. It’s going to be sad, and enraging, and terrifying—even disgusting at times—but our practice has trained us to handle all of these feelings and keep our heart open and our head clear. And an open heart with a clear head and the willingness to take action is not nothing.
In the meantime, Kyiv is going dark again in the frigid night, for what seems like the hundredth night in a row. The pain of it is still painful. I refuse to look away—and I refuse to use practice as a hiding place. Grief is a sane response. Let it open the heart and steady the hands.
