What To Do When It Gets Hard

I, tender, abide.

This is the mantra I’ve been turning to lately.

I’m engaging with it to stay present and open, to be with what is—whether that be delightful and joyous, or unbelievable and hard.

Like caring for an elderly relative who spent weeks in the hospital and is now in a rehabilitation center. The hope is she can go home. Will that be possible?

I don’t know, and neither does she.

What I do know is that walking to her room, I see (I feel) what life and time can do to us—how we can end up like shells with all the life crawling out of us, leaving a roaring emptiness behind.

Every time I visit her, I am reminded of Buddhism’s “Five Remembrances.” The first says that we are of the nature to grow old—there is no escaping it.

The second is we are of the nature to have ill health.

We are also of the nature to die.

Every thing and every one that is dear to us is of the nature to change, and so there is no escape from being separated from them.

And finally, our only true belongings are our actions.

I doubt I am alone in thinking this is the most depressing list ever created. You aren’t going to find this one on Buzzfeed.

And yet ignoring these hard truths doesn’t make them untrue. It only makes it that much harder for us to face them when they freight train into our lives.

What are we to do?

I came across something that might help me—us—brave the tenderness inside—whether that be because of what we or a loved one is going through, or because of all the other things going on in the state, the country, the world right now.

It’s Walter Burghardt’s definition of contemplation: “A long loving look at the real.”

By this definition, contemplation is not an attempt to turn the wild ocean inside into an empty vessel.

Nor is it navigating the traffic jam of thoughts, or trying to get the wiggling puppy of my mind to just. Sit. Still.

It’s a long and loving look at the real.

If we can brave that, we might be able to see that ache, grief, and fear are actually gifts.

We ache and grieve because we love.

We fear because of how precious it all is.

We worry because what we do matters, and we want to get it right.

So, time to practice contemplation.

Time to give a long and loving look at the real, both inside and out.

Time to breathe and let be.

To drop into the Current, and—tender, so very tender—abide.