How can we pour into this crater carved-out by loss,
a loss that we’re seeing and feeling everywhere we turn?
This loss in ourselves.
This loss in our society.
(We only have to look at the shock and near-grieving process that many Americans and the world are going through after the election result.)
…
I have something to say about loss.
And about the condition in which we find ourselves.
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So, many of us have been emotionally moved by the track ‘Re:Stacks’ by Bon Iver.
If you haven’t heard it, I recommend the 6 minutes (video above). And I’d prepare yourself, because usually it’s 30 seconds in and I’m welling up…
And I never fully put my finger on what it is about this song.
that has brought me to this loss?
That line…
Whatever could it be
that has brought me to this loss?
The other day I was listening to the track while walking through the streets of Trieste, when I heard that line and stopped dead in my tracks. I was filled with overwhelm and my eyes filled with tears. I looked around and noticed that I was in the most central point in the city (for Triestinos, it was the direct line from the Municipality in the center of Piazza Unita, looking out to sea), which felt even more synergistic.
And I realised that this song could be about… is about…. so much more than gambling your possessions away in some seedy, sad casino.
And I suddenly felt the wider significance, on a global level.
It dawned on me as being a question that has begged most profoundly for me in the darkest moments of my life. And that has arguably begged most profoundly in many spaces of our modern age;
as literally a question of the human condition.
And if it is a question of the human condition,
then what is the answer?
- Expectation that once you get x then – ahhh – y , and all falls into place.
- Expectation that ‘true love lasts forever’.
- Expectation that ‘all hard work pays off’.
- And in the case of the literal meaning of this song:
Expectation that, at long last, ‘money will bring you happiness’.
… a symptom of the separation that lies embedded in the narrative of our culture.
It’s the over-expectation that all we seek is out there; rather than finding any of it inside of ourselves – in the infinite containers of our own being.
We complicate and we grasp and we exhaust our minds. We strive and we strive and we completely disempower ourselves along the way.
Whether we lose ourselves in a relationship,
Or we lose ourselves in a career,
Or we lose ourselves in an idea of how we think society wants us to be.
It’s an endless battle that we never win.
It is to constantly live in the future when all we truly have is the now.
(And ‘living in the now’ is not as esoteric as it sounds. Eckhart Tolle drops some much-needed wisdom in that department.)
It is to perpetually look at the world in terms of how we want it to be – how we expect it to be – rather than how it is.
And there are moments in this life where – after a long time of built-up expectation in an illusive future – this fact of the ever-ungraspable victory comes crashing down around us…. crash landing us into the now… and making us feel crippled in the pain of a smashing of truth and a sense of a ‘dawning reality’. (‘Your pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses your understanding.’ – Kahlil Gibran)
Where we find ourselves looking up at the sky and asking that heart-collapsing question:
Whatever could it be
that has brought me to this loss?
I know because I’ve been there. My first ‘crash landing’ of this kind happened when I was aged 20. And I felt exactly like this.
And I believe we all experience this at some point in our lives; usually early on. I see it as ‘the end of innocence and the beginning of truth’. It’s that point where all expectation you’d ever known and relied on as your identity seems to dissolve before your eyes.
In time, I have understood that I am not (and never was) alone in this feeling.
Loss is a fact of life;
failure,
rejections,
endings,
death.
And – unfortunately – loss teaches us.
But
Here is the thing…
There is a certain level of expectation and loss that I believe we are experiencing in this modern world;
An extremely high level of expectation and loss.
A level of betrayal and deprivation and deep, deep disconnection that needn’t be there. That shouldn’t be there.
And I believe that this loss-endemic is part and parcel with the current capitalist and neoliberal paradigm as we know it.
And yes – to me – it goes as deep as economic; our human condition and the fabric of the society we live in is intrinsically connected.
It is why depression, general mental illness and suicide is at an all-time high.
It is why addiction is at an all time high (whether it’s substances, consumerism or destructive behaviour);
As we desperately seek to fill the void of what we have lost. Of what we continue to lose. Of what we may not even know we have lost, because we never had it to begin with.
And it all stems from the story of separation – our society’s scarcity thinking;
I can never do enough, have enough or be enough.
‘Now’ and ‘this’ is never enough in our society.
Everyday, we’re at a loss of gratitude.
Everyday, we’re at a loss of presence.
Everyday, we’re at a loss of allowing one-another in all our unfolding, because we’re too busy expecting of one another.
Everyday, we’re at a loss of true and meaningful connection to the now,
and to the people, environment and God-given blessings around us.
And then we wonder why we didn’t see that living in a constant state of external expectation was going to crash-land upon us one dark day with the most crippling sense of loss we could ever imagine. (Climate Change, anyone?)
Connection. That’s what we’ve lost;
true and deep and raw and meaningful connection.
- Connection with the beautiful place in nature that you’re walking through.
- Connection with the people and communities that work to bring you freedom and joy in your society.
- Connection with the person sitting drinking coffee with you.
- Connection with the human being that looks you in the mirror when you wake up in the morning (you, you, you.)
And – on every level – scarcity and expectation is why we have lost connection….
It’s being in a relationship because of who you hope the person could be or might be, not because of who they are now.
It’s being in a painstaking job because of the rewards you’re hoping you might reap later on in life, not because it feeds your soul each and every day.
Who we are now. To breathe into that. To be that. To own that. And then to move forward into the world as generous as is possible.
To generously forge connections with loved ones and our communities, (re) discovering connection with the natural world around us, and – most illusively – the connection within ourselves.
So –
‘What ever could it be that has brought us to this loss?’
The answer is scarcity
and expectation;
in short, disconnection.
And our job now – as we face some of the most crushing shocks and disappointments of our generation (and it’s only just getting started) –
is to stand at the precipice and pour into this loss in ourselves,
into the loss in us all…
… by being giving of our most truthful, present self.
Our job now is to be of devoted service to love and connection.
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