Green Thoughts: A Mindfulness Community

“Whatever pain you can’t get rid of, make it your creative offering.” – Susan Cain, Bittersweet

Just before my 44th birthday, a story popped up in my newsfeed informing me that humans age the most in two bursts, around 44 and 60. The timing of this news made me laugh. Then the following week, I received X-ray results. They confirmed that my chronic neck pain was not caused by a muscle injury, but rather by degenerative disc disease. This isn’t a serious condition as many people develop DDD after 40 and it isn’t always painful, but it does mean that I have essentially been diagnosed with oldness. Happy birthday to me!

That being said, I am very grateful to be a part of this experiment in aliveness, whatever highs and lows it may bring. Some new perspectives have been percolating at the edges of my ‘mature’ brain lately, and they’ve been bringing me peace. If the cost of these insights is the deterioration of some spongy tissue between my vertebrae, so be it. 

I just finished reading Susan Cain’s book ‘Bittersweet: How Sorrow and Longing Make Us Whole’, and while it isn’t exactly light holiday reading, I think it is appropriate to the holiday season, a time that can inspire the most bitter and most sweet emotions, sometimes in the space of a single moment. This is, in fact, the main idea in the book; sorrow and joy are inextricably linked. Our most difficult emotions, like longing and despair, are not just discomforts to be endured but can be used as pathways to greater connection and creativity. 

While I agree with Cain’s idea, I think it can become problematic when we expect to grasp the meaning of suffering while it is happening. To be clear, the author isn’t advocating that we rush through grief or anxiety to get to the lesson on the other side, but I notice this tendency in our culture (and myself). Sometimes, we may be in a place where we need to use all our resources to get through a situation. In these instances, finding meaning can seem like an outrageous burden. Just expressing and accepting our painful feelings can be the healing we need when life is unkind.

Shortly after finishing Bittersweet, I spontaneously started incorporating a new practice into my life. When I noticed myself experiencing peace or joy, I would allow my appreciation to be enhanced by recalling a difficulty. For example, while walking around a holiday market with my son last night, I was filled with enormous gratitude for his health given that we had been housebound with a cold just a few days before. Every experience we had that night seemed more beautiful because I was aware of how we could be missing out on all of it. 

In order to accept that discomfort is a normal and potentially useful part of life, I find it helpful to recall difficulty in a happy moment, rather than trying to locate meaning in a time of emotional upheaval. In this way, I can approach suffering from a place of strength, allowing it to transform my perspective over time and slowly counter my knee-jerk resistance to emotional discomfort.  I imagine this practice may be especially helpful now that I’ve been officially diagnosed with a case of the olds, which I’m choosing to call EWS (Enhanced Wisdom Syndrome) as I develop more awareness of the sweet side effects of life’s bitter pills.