Life is...

I have this beautiful group of friends from childhood. We have a text thread and during 2020, we have been active on it almost everyday. We send videos, and updates, and singing telegrams to each other. In August one of them asked me for "some of that buddhist stuff" to explain why life is so bizarre. Here is my response.

Technically I don’t know much about Buddhism

But I can say that over the years I have learned how to feel life in my body.

To feel that my body is digesting the banana I just ate and turning that into energy. And one time my body grew a person.

I did not have to manage or understand any of that. Life handles it. I can pay attention and feel my body wants a salad or a nap or a pizza. And participate with life. Sometimes it’s easy to know how to meet life. Other times it’s almost impossible to know.

And sometimes life does some other shit. Like burn down a canyon or put a jackass in office or cancer. I don’t need to understand why but I do have choices.

I can learn about biology and politics and fire science. But I don’t have to make the underlying why make sense. That’s where the suffering is, I think. Trying to make it make sense.

Like why does someone die when they do, or get cancer? I don’t fucking know. Humans are complex. There are layers to us and to life.

I can feel what I feel. Let that life force, that energy, move through my body. I can learn how to not let my nervous system get hijacked. By my emotions or the shitshow around me.

But, to me, the meaning in it all is how willing are we to open to life. To participate. To say, ok this is what’s happening I need to meet the challenge.

Sometimes that means taking a nap. Sometimes it means eating more veggies. Sometimes it means writing an email. Having a tough conversation. Crying and screaming at “god” for 30 minutes.

You can’t escape life. You gotta find your fierce, your source of strength, your people, and fucking take it.

Know yourself. Life is living in you.

I would like to add: how much can you bring a sense of love to yourself through the experience. Can you soften instead of armor while remaining in integrity?

I do find great joy in reading your replies to my emails. Thank you for your attention.

Love

Amy