How to find peace in turmoil
Are you okay? Are you feeling overwhelmed?
We are currently being bombarded by horrific images and stories of death, pain, trauma, and suffering in Palestine that most of us can do almost nothing about.
How do we meet our days, our seemingly trivial lives, in the face of such tragedy? We all have different coping mechanisms for dealing with the stresses we encounter. Some of us feel guilt, anger, or maybe apathy and hopelessness. It might feel impossible to feel much else at this time, but perhaps there is opportunity for growth and expansion.
You deserve to feel good. Is this hard for you to believe? Is it uncomfortable for you to embrace? Are you more at ease with the idea that you deserve to feel bad or to struggle or suffer? Maybe it’s more that you feel like you don’t deserve to feel good when others are suffering.
Experiencing something pleasant in the face of someone else’s suffering is uncomfortable, and something that many of us may avoid by simply choosing rather to feel bad; feeling bad is almost an easier option. Shrinking your heart to protect it, to feel less pain and sorrow, also means feeling less pleasure and joy. This practice can slowly and unconsciously begin to rob you of your joy and your love. It might start to dim your world, or drive you to perceive the world as a cruel place in which we are all separate from each other. This is one way of seeing the world, and you have the right to choose it, but why would you want to?
Being able to hold both the pain and the suffering AND the joy and pleasure that we experience in equal measure on this planet requires you to open your heart a bit wider than you may be used to. It demands that you stretch yourself a little further, and, though there may be tears in your eyes, to look upon the polarity and paradox with grace in your gaze. It requires a surrender to not knowing, to not understanding. In addition to this it asks for a commitment to protecting beauty, goodness and love. It requires a gratitude for everything you encounter, from the sacred to the mundane, because what a privilege it is to be here, to breathe, to hurt, to hold a loved one, to live.
If you can practice this it will be a triumph not only for you, but for all humanity. If you can heal enough to be able to love yourself and the world in spite of all the reasons one might deem them unlovable, it will be a powerful and transformative act. Your healing means one more of us is doing better, one more of us moving through the world with a larger capacity for love and compassion and understanding. This not only lifts us all but also lights the path for others to follow.
Try to seek peace and stillness within your own heart. Try to open yourself a little wider, to make space for more love, more sorrow, more beauty, more pain, more compassion, for yourself and others.