More words

Dear all,

Today, I am sad.

It’s funny, by which I mean interesting, the aversion we have to this word and this emotion. When I hear “I am sad,” or I see someone who is sad, I want to do something to make it go away. I call this wanting to help them. And I do want to help them. But part of it is also finding it very difficult to simply bear their sadness and let them be sad.

I had therapy yesterday. Normally, we do this thing called brainspotting. This time, Frau W stopped it five minutes in, something that has never happened before. You are so low, she said, that I have a feeling brainspotting won’t work. Let’s try something else.

This shocked me. Brainspotting has always worked. How low must I be for Frau W to stop?

-

This morning, the door opened and Rahi came in. Papa, he said. Rahi, I said, turning over groggily.

I came down to make a surprise for everyone, he said, but I need you to get the smoothie maker. And the frozen berries.

Okay, I said.

The milk I can get myself, I said.

Okay, I said. Give me a couple of minutes, and I’ll help you.

Okay, he said, and climbed into bed with me. We curled up and I held him close.

I love you endlessly, I told him. You’re the sweetest boy in the world.

Papa, he said. Why did we leave the football out when we were tidying up last night?

I don’t know, Rahi. I must have forgotten.

He fell silent again and pushed his back into me, cuddling closer. I told him again that I loved him, because I do.

I want to go make the surprise now, he said.

Yep, I said, and we went to the kitchen and made smoothies with frozen blueberries and two types of milk.

-

The Scottish philosopher David Hume makes a striking observation about what we typically call the self:

“when I enter most intimately into what I call myself, I always stumble on some particular perception or other, of heat or cold, light or shade, love or hatred, pain or pleasure. I never can catch myself at any time without a perception, and never can observe any thing but the perception.”

This experience suggests, says Hume, that there is no there there - there is no self independent of the perceptions passing through the theatre of the mind. The self, he argues, is ‘nothing but a bundle or collection of different perceptions.’

Is he right? Who knows. Maybe. I remember him now because I wonder, where is my self? Which is my self? The deep sadness now, the unprecedented low yesterday? The moments this morning with Rahi?

Is my self equivalent to my feelings? Or am I something apart from my despair or even apart from my love? Is there even “something apart” from all those things, or is Hume right?

If I can find a way to drive a wedge between “me” and “my emotional state”, I have a way of allowing sadness to live without it overwhelming me. Maybe this makes it less scary? Easier, somehow? Or is it a way of pushing sadness away?

And now when I return to the beginning, I wonder … I said: “Today, I am sad.” Well, it’s not today, is it? It’s one slice of today, a particular moment in time. And inside me are things other than sadness. There is love, there is courage, there is despair, there is joy. There is tiredness that goes bone deep and there are springs of eternal delight.

This is not consolation. I do not want consolation. I want a clear-sighted vision of the world and everything it gives me.

I want to live.