Fear, pain, beauty, joy
There’s a saying that an optimist is someone who knows how bad things are, and a pessimist is someone who’s still finding out. That sums up a truth about the process of healing. Most people don’t want to start the process, because it means finding out bad things. And then it often seems as though things are getting worse. Sometimes, it has to get desperate before it gets better.
Let’s start then with the bad news.
The word ‘desperate’ means literally ‘without hope’. All of us have been at some time without hope, and it was so scary we don’t want to go back there. We pretend that we’re OK, fine, cool, peachy (at least, I do). And hope that we will somehow muddle through. But as the poet TS Eliot said, “wait without hope, because hope would be hope for the wrong thing”. The wrong thing we hope for is that we can avoid our pain.
And the problem with that is that so long as we refuse to let in our pain, to grieve it, we’re abandoning a part of ourselves to its fate. Like most people, I was hurt deeply as a child. It’s almost impossible to come through childhood without something happening that leaves a mark, and it’s as if we have that hurt child still within us, crying out to be heard. And we need to listen to it. Nobody else will, or can.
So that’s the bad news. And let’s be honest, it’s pretty bad.
The good news is that we can start to get better, and that it’s never as bad as that scared child believes. Back then, things were overwhelming, but as adults we can develop the strength to care for the hurt child within. We can wipe away its tears, hold it, treasure it. Grieving is often seen to be a weakness, but I think it’s better seen as a skill, a daily practice.
The paradox is that the way down is eventually the way up. Our old wounds seem to offer only pain, shame and misery, but surprisingly, they can become a source of strength. And the way up is also the way down: trying to escape from ‘going down’ will only make things worse. The higher we climb, scared of the dark, the further our eventual fall will be.
I love this picture (above) of the Lake District, taken by my friend Sue Walsh, because of the way it balances the light that’s streaming through the clouds against a rich landscape of dark tones. Beauty is a healing balm that seems to be at its strongest when the darkness is most evident.
