Day after day I am inundated by news and events that highlight the pervasiveness of hatred, contempt, intolerance, greed and violence in what seems like every corner of the world.
215 Children found murdered at a Residential School site. An oil spill into a river system. A rich business person becomes richer. Three men die of overdose after the safe consumption site is closed by the provincial government. An anti-mask rodeo rally draws hundreds.
Raw emotion bubbles up from within me like a volcano. Anger, grief, and yearning for retribution often ooze out of me like hot lava. Social media only intensifies these feelings and a conversation with my in-laws often pushes me over the edge.
Beneath my rage lies a deep desire for nonviolence and peace, yet I am frequently overcome by a sense of righteousness that gives way to corrosive cynicism.
Why does no one care about the world as much as I do? Why am I one of the only ones who gets it? Why is everyone else so selfish?
When I’m not righteous or cynical, I’m often tempted by the comfort of irrelevant
idealism to ignore the struggle of living with integrity and pretend it’s all going to be ok. To pretend that my actions don’t matter, that my words won’t change anything, so I should just mind my own business and carry on.
As Parker says, we need to stand and act in the “tragic gap” between these two poles of cynicism and idealism. Between the way things are and the way we know they might be, faithfully holding the tension between reality and possibility.
But how?
As a [recovering] perfectionist, holding this tension is a particularly difficult challenge, since there is no perfect way to stand and act in the tragic gap. My own imperfections make this fact obvious to me. While I am discouraged and disheartened by the blatant disregard for others that seems to be in every news headline and even in some of the actions of those close to me. If I’m being honest, I notice my own hypocrisy at times too, when I knowingly do what’s easy instead of
what’s right, which only brings me more despair.
Parker also says that violence is what happens when we don’t know what to do with our suffering, but he goes on to invite us to use this heartbreak as an opportunity to develop a supple heart; one that breaks open, not apart, growing into greater capacity for the many forms of love. Only the supple heart can hold suffering in a way that opens to new life. Only the supple heart can still hold empathy and compassion in the face of ignorance and contempt for others.
Only the supple heart can help us to create the world we wish to see, the world we know is possible.
Again I wonder, but how?
How do I keep my heart supple despite the despair that makes me want to close it off and never read another news article or have another difficult conversation again?
How do I keep my heart supple and also hold myself and others accountable for both our words and actions?
Unfortunately for me, according to Parker, there are many ways to make the heart more supple, but none of them involve closing off our hearts or avoiding the pain that comes from difficult conversations with those we don’t agree with, and all of them come down to this:
Take it in, take it all in!
My heart can be stretched each time I’m able to take in life’s little heartbreaks: a loved one who spouts hatred or intolerance for diversity, a mean-spirited critique of my values on social media, a personal failure at doing or saying the right thing, a loss, a longing. Taking in these difficult moments involving others, also involves me taking in each of my own imperfections, failings, and mistakes, as I am able to extend grace and forgiveness to myself for my own struggles and screw ups, my heart softens to the failings and mistakes of others. Taking in life’s little joys also
contributes to the suppleness of my heart: a small kindness from a stranger, the wagging tail of my dog when I return home, the infectious giggle of two-year-old Norah next door as I stick my tongue out at her and wink, the delicate buds on the plants I haven’t yet killed from over or under watering them, the news article of the teenage boys that stopped on their way to a basketball game to help rescue hundreds of seniors from a burning building last week. Taking all of it in — the good and the bad alike — is a form of exercise that slowly transforms my clenched fist of a heart into an open hand so that I can remain in the gap, holding the tension a
little longer.
I am learning that for me, one who tends toward corrosive cynicism most of the time, offering myself grace so that I might in turn offer it to others, turning to wonder, and taking in each of these small joys with a sense of awe might just be the most important thing I do in a day. It might just save my life from being swallowed up by despair, and paying attention to these small joys actually helps me to be more present in the challenging areas of life.
The paradox is that the small wonderful and often ordinary things remind me why the challenging and heartbreaking things are so important.