Crazy or Courageous

CRAZY OR COURAGEOUS

     “When my second marriage fell apart, I tasted the rawness of grief, the utter groundlessness of sorrow, and all the protective shields I had always managed to keep in place fell to pieces. To my surprise, along with the pain, I also felt an uncontrived tenderness for other people. I remember the complete openness and gentleness I felt for those I met briefly in the post office or at the grocery store. I found myself approaching the people I encountered as just like me – fully alive, fully capable of meanness and kindness, of stumbling and falling down and of standing up again. I’d never before experienced that much intimacy with unknown people.”

     The surprising experience that Buddhist nun Pema Chodron writes about after her failed marriage is what might be called a dark gift. She did not want to feel the gloom of emotional devastation, but its impact on her life was truly something she valued. It is as if walls of separation crumbled as she felt a warmth and connection with strangers rather than the ordinary distance most of us feel in relation to people we don’t know.  

    What enabled Chodron to experience “an uncontrived tenderness for other people” is that she did not run from the emotional pain she felt, but instead, allowed herself to be impacted by it. Her pain became the portal to liberation from separation because she had the wisdom to resist the counterintuitive impulse to escape its ache. It may appear to be crazy to sit with – not wallow in – feelings that are difficult, but the truth is that it’s courageous to face and feel the texture of what is painful.

     The difference between crazy and courageous has to do with whether we value comfort or growth. The former is the default for most of us, for who would opt to keep their hand on a hot stove or their heart open to its breaking? But the latter is a matter of choice; it is a decision based on the belief that life is our teacher, and that the lessons we are meant to learn are often cloaked in the darkness of the difficult.

     For Chodron and for all of us, the outcome of our willingness to choose growth is not only that by doing so we become better individuals, but also that we become better able to connect with others as people who are, for better and worse, “just like me.”