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In an acting class recently, it became clear that everyone was sad. Deeply sad, deep in the belly sad. No one wanted to feel the sadness, of course. Who would? It's one of the more uncomfortable body sensations we can have. So there were all sorts of reactions/actions, like:
"I don't want to feel sad."
"I'm not sad. Maybe it's you who's sad. You're just projecting."
"Um... I don't know. Do I seem sad?"
"Smiling. Yes, I'm smiling. Am I happy? Sure, I guess so. I'm smiling, right?"
"I don't want to be sad! I'm so _____ing sick of being sad! G__ D___it!"
This is not just actors. This is the state of the world we live in. When looked at from a particular point of view, that point of view most of us naturally have most of the time, the world can seem a pretty sad place. People dying. Money being lost. Romance falling apart. Body falling apart. Dreams unmet. Chances not taken. Lives un-lived.
Sadness might actually be the sane response to a seemingly insane world.
But then there's the reaction to the sadness as well, and this too seems to be habitual in so many of us so much of the time. It's not okay to be sad. If I'm sad, that means I've done something wrong. If I'm sad, I won't be accepted, I won't be wanted, I'll be unloveable. No one will want to work with me. Etc.
So what can we do? As my sister, Bird, says, "You can't jump from air to air." You have to start from where you are. If you're sad, acknowledge it. Stop ignoring it. When we ignore, we doom ourselves to be at the mercy of the thing we're choosing to ignore. Nothing is sadder, really, than pretending we're not sad. When we ignore, we're at the effect of all the things that help us remain ignorant. Chocolate, alcohol, over-eating, mindless texting and tweeting, judgment of others. We all have one or two or twenty ways of avoidance and not feeling.
So we stop all that. We stop ignoring. And then what?
Imagine you're next to a railroad track. You're sad. All you want to do is sit. The sadness makes you want to stay still. Maybe it won't hurt as much. But now a train is going by. Slowly. There are people on the train who look to be having fun. They must be different than me. They're moving. They don't look sad. But we don't listen to our head. We don't listen to all the reasons we have for staying still, for not moving. We've trained ourselves to get up. To walk toward the tracks, then to begin moving in the same direction as the train, walking alongside. And as we walk, we start to feel just a little bit better, so that now we can start to jog. We catch the eye of someone on the train, and both of us would like to connect a little more with each other, so we get going fast enough that we can catch hold of the handle, or maybe even someone's hand, and swing up onto the party train without danger of it running over us.
In the Vedic world view there never is anything I should or shouldn't be feeling. There sometimes is a different way of looking at things, a different understanding we may be able to find about the feelings we're having. Where might we find this different point of view? We move in the direction of life, of love, of God. We're here to have bliss.
Today I will get up to walk or run or dance even though I feel like sitting and maybe never moving again.
Adele on Train, Haridwar, India
All material copyright Jeff Kober (except photo above)
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