The True Tragedy

Have you ever been caught thinking about something you don't want to be thinking about?

Something bad that happened. A person who hurt you. An experience you lived through that still makes you wince. I spent most of my life feeling this way — living day to day with all of the things I didn't want to think about. Carrying crushing anxiety and believing that's just how it had to be.

While I was on this road trip, I spent a lot of time thinking about all the things I wish I could change. All the things that were coming that I didn't want to have happen. All the wondering about what ifs.

Only to realize that none of it would help. None of it would make anything go away.

The only thing that would help was not having to think about it anymore. Letting it go. Fully surrendering it. Knowing there's nothing I can do about it.

The Pain of Trusting

I've had numerous people hurt me in significant ways recently. People I trusted. People I would have stepped in front of a moving bus to save — only to realize I meant nothing to them. Or very little, at least. Only to realize they would never have done the same for me.

This is the pain of living. Of trusting. Of stepping into relationship with other people. The pain of growth. The pain of losing people you thought were forever. The pain of letting go of those who only give you the bare minimum. The pain of having the people closest to you walk away suddenly and blame you for it.

What got me here won't get me there. I heard that phrase in business many years ago and didn't believe it. I didn't want to believe it — because the people in my life at the time were people I thought were forever.

I look around my life now and I don't see any of them anymore.

It wasn't until I spent a week of my road trip without reaching out to anyone that I noticed how few people reach out to me. It's not that everyone is as intentional about staying connected as I am. But it made me see just how much effort I pour into relationships and how little I receive in return.

I had a friend recently who left in a spectacle of fireworks — and took other people with her. It was painful in the moment. But when I looked back, I realized I had been dragging her along with me for years. Asking her to come with me. She never said no. But she never really said yes, either.

That relationship showed me just how much I trust without question. How much I give without receiving. How much I support without asking for much back.

Mark Nepo wrote in The Book of Awakening: "Tragedy stays alive by feeling what's been done to us, while peace comes alive by living with the result."

The NeverEnding Story

I spent most of my childhood recounting the terror of The NeverEnding Story — a movie I watched in second grade and never finished because I was so scared of the scenes and the tragedy. It wasn't until I was eighteen that I watched it again, only to realize I didn't have the same fear. My more developed brain could handle what my younger self couldn't.

That same thing applies to so much of my life. How often I sit in the tragedy of something rather than in the beauty of it. How often I ruminate on what I could have done differently. How often I replay being hurt, being scared, sitting in a space of not knowing and wondering what happened.

I was talking to a friend the other day who had a very similar experience. She told me she wanted to start a movement where we tell someone when our friendship has completed itself. Where we can say, "I am complete with this friendship," instead of leaving in a spectacle of blame and anger — or just ghosting. I've noticed this seems to be a pattern for me: trusting that people are as transparent as I am when there's something hiding beneath the surface.

These dark spaces I sit in for years afterward cause me to want to close my heart again. But I now see that I have lived most of my life with my heart open. Heart on my sleeve, waiting for someone to accept it, only to have them break it into pieces.

And yet I still don't close it.

I still keep my heart as open as possible because I truly believe I can live in the peace of the result. I don't have to live in the tragedy.