True Love Exists

What does love look like in the 21st century? 

Does true compassion exist? So often we love another in an attempt to validate ourselves. This is not love but self-love. And perhaps it's not even self-love because it is coming from a place of scarcity, from thinking we are not enough. We need to reassure ourselves that we are enough, that we are lovable, that the world sees and appreciates our value. Even making another person feel good or acting in a generous way can be an act of selfishness if our motivation for action is for the sense of reassurance that "I am a good person" or for the joy, peace, and comfort that comes from bringing joy to another person.

Granted, if all motivations of pleasure and pain are inherently selfish, not all forms of selfishness are created equal. Mutual rapture is light years away from sexual abuse. Giving to charity or helping your neighbor may be a selfish act if it is done for the personal validation of improving someone else's life but it is far superior to stealing from someone.

In the Jewish tradition there is a saying "the anonymous mitzvah is the greatest mitzvah." A mitzvah is an act of service or kindness. If you were to perform a good deed and ask yourself: "would I be doing this even if I never gained recognition for it" what would be your answer? If it would no longer be worth performing, perhaps motivation is coming from a desire for validation, appreciation, recognition, or love.

Here's the good thing: if you bring your attention to it, if you are willing to look at your moment to moment experience and entertain the idea that you may be acting out of selfishness, that selfishness can not hold. Selfishness breaks apart, dissolves, just like an emotion. It may come back again and again, in various forms but if we remain a compassionate and courageous observer it loses it's power.

I do believe that true compassion, true love, and true selflessness exist.

You Are Not Alone

Today is the five year anniversary of my father's death. He was fifty-five when he took his own life. I would say chose to die, but there is something less than autonomous about a desperate desire to be free from emotional pain. I think we both imagined a different future together. I know we did. And after a hard winter that left me reeling and healing and tender and simply grateful for air, I now understand just a little bit better how hard life can be, especially in the prison of our own minds. At least it gave me my new favorite tag line: some days, success is putting your pants on. I think I understand my father's desperate desire to replace pain with peace and yet, I have a fierce certainty that he would love to be here if he could.

I do hope my father is at peace and I know he truly was in a great deal of pain - he lost much of his autonomy in the last few years of his life to an addiction to oxycontin, he lost his job as a lawyer, was getting a divorce from my mother, was generally unhappy with these changes in his life.  The reason I'm compelled to share this information is because we don't talk about these things. On father's day I put up a relatively generic "I love you Dad and miss you" post but at the very moment I clicked to post, I remembered there was someone, somewhere, thinking about suicide, chilling in a psychiatric unit after a suicide attempt, or generally feeling uncomfortable in their own skin because being in the world and in our bodies can be incredibly uncomfortable at times.

This post is for all the people who have felt at their wits end, perhaps unwilling or unable to reach out or feeling that no one would be there to catch them if they did.  This is also for the people who genuinely have trouble understanding what it must be like to not want to live, to be in so much pain and discomfort that the only option seems to be death. This world can be an incredibly lonely and alienating place and sometimes, there is no solution to the things that ail us. But there is power in storytelling and conversation.  I am not ashamed of my father or of my own experiences with depression. Life is so hard some times.

So, this is for you dad - and for all of us.  My small truth offered up as a gift or a spark or a doorway or permission to be whatever it is you are, to feel whatever it is you are feeling. Free from shame or fear. It's hard enough without piling that on top.

And I can truthfully say I am grateful for the joy and clarity that my experiences have afforded me. The friends that have been by my side whether they knew this part of my story or not. Even as I miss my father on the five year anniversary of his death, and mourn the future we will never share together, I am grateful for the clarity and joy that lies hidden in the most unexpected and dark places. Grateful to be both living and alive which I consider a triumph of the human spirit. I would like to congratulate anyone out there who is doing the same.

**A virtual high five today if you are breathing and maybe even put your pants on**