It's okay, whispered love
And now these three remain: faith, hope, and love. But the greatest of these is love.
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I am in many respects a somewhat broken man.
I say this, for once, without shame, without self-loathing or sadness or anger. I say it as a simple truth.
What do I mean when I speak of being in many respects broken? There are a variety of external manifestations, big and small. Here are two.
This week, I’ve been sleeping on the carpet (an upgrade from the floor!), using a crumpled up t-shirt as a pillow and a dirty sheet (the moving men walked over it so that they didn’t dirty the carpet) as a blanket. Why? Because we’re moving, and I got rid of the spare mattress last weekend, and I can’t be bothered to find something to sleep on for this week.
I am also a serial addict, and the truly twisted thing is that I pursue my addictions beyond the point at which they give me pleasure. For example, as a young boy at university, I started regularly smoking marijuana. I suppose at some point I must have enjoyed it, because otherwise why would I have continued doing it? After a year or so, the pleasure wore off. But I kept smoking it, and in increasing quantities.
A crisis intervened and I stopped smoking weed (and taking coke). Great. But then there were cigarettes. I ended up smoking about 60 cigarettes a day. 400 a week! Of these, I enjoyed maybe 3. The rest were emotionally and often physically painful. But still I kept on. Eventually, I quit smoking.
Today, my addictions are probably food and the internet / my phone. These too I pursue well beyond the point of pleasure. In fact, in some way their purpose seems to me the opposite. I think I pursue them to hurt myself.
Something is broken here, no? I do not want pain. I want to be happy. And yet I search out pain and cause myself unhappiness.
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This morning, I had a shower (it was a bit like that scene in James Bond where Daniel Craig comes out of the sea). At some point, I leaned against the wall, hot water splashing down on my back, my head bowed. I felt the weight of the suffering inside. I felt the pain and the fear.
I’m sorry, I said.
The water felt good against my back. I half-closed my eyes.
I’m sorry, I said again.
Who was talking? I don’t know for sure. It was me, some part of me, the part that’s broken, the part that fucks things up, the part that makes life difficult for the rest of me and for people around me.
It said sorry again. I stood under the hot water, feeling the curve of my spine change as something began to relax. And instead of thoughts came a tender, fragile love, a love that itself had suffered, a love that was itself raw and aching and for this reason all the more profound.
It’s ok, whispered the love.
The broken part wept.
It’s ok, whispered the love, and the love wept too.
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I said earlier that “eventually I quit smoking”. That’s true. But it’s a bit like describing the Buddha’s enlightenment experience as “he sat under a tree”. I’ve written about quitting smoking before, but let me try to give you the selected highlights here.
Annika caught me smoking after I had said I’d quit. And instead of being angry or disappointed or upset, Anni met me with love. She saw the pain and the need and the suffering and she loved it. That’s all. She held me, she held it, she wrapped love around me like a healing balsam - and it did heal me. I have never smoked since.
There is a mystery here I do not understand - that I suddenly think is not meant to be understood, not in the usual ways. But as I stood under the water and love spoke, I lived the mystery again.
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We are all broken.
There are bits of us that don’t fit, bits that we are ashamed of, bits that we are afraid of. There are things we long for that we push away. There are things we hate that we repeatedly welcome. There is anger and hurt and suffering inside us that we cannot productively live, but instead builds up over the years, killing us just as surely as the cholesterol accumulating in our arteries.
I do not say that this is all there is, I do not say that all of us broken. There is much more, and some of it is whole. But I do say that this is also there, and that we are all in some places broken.
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I do not know why I find it so difficult to love - to love myself, and to love others.
But you don’t find it difficult, I hear my friends saying. And it’s true. I am indeed an excellent lover. But here I mean a love that embraces everything. A love that doesn’t discriminate, doesn’t attach conditions, doesn’t make reproaches. A love that is simply there, always and for everything. I don't think I'm very good at that kind of love.
I think this is how Anaya loves her mother. I think this is how Rahi loves me. It seems to come naturally. What happens to us as we get older?
Sitting here on a street corner, a light breeze against my ankles, a generous sun on my cheeks, I resolve to try.
