Spring has arrived, and along with it, the irresistible desire to clean closets, basements, take out bags that haven't been opened in months (actually in years) and wipe the dust off the shelves, move books, rearrange things.
As from outside, so from inside.
This time, in my case, the “house of losses” is being cleaned.
And, from the very beginning - from about the age of six, when, upon discovering an album from my baby days, I realized for the first time that everything is temporary and that I will never be that small again, that those days are gone forever. It was also the first realization of my own impermanence and transformation, mostly the biological one at the time.
Every day that is gone has gone. Done. No more of that same day. Never again.
There is another day, some new people, different circumstances.
And that's how slowly disappeared the street where I used to play “the elastic” with girls and football with the boys as well as wars with the kids from the neighboring street. Gone are the huts we built, with a carpet made of field flowers where we would eat lunch, which was much yummier there, on an abandoned lot between two houses, under an old plum tree, than at the table at home... gone are the times in which the day ends only because the moon smiles with the stars that are scattered in the sky and the children's buzz never dies down. They stubbornly resist and “spit” once more into the old, wooden pole - as if to say: you didn't manage to find me while we were playing hide and seek, neither this night will find me and force me to go home and sleep... just in spite of it all "spit for me"....
It wasn't worth the spite. It is gone. The day and night, and hide and seek, and roller-skates, and “the elastic”, and ball games... Everything is gone.
It was followed by the the loss of presence of the close ones (some went to “eternal hunting grounds” and some just chose not to be there anymore and went in another direction). Loss of ground and home where I grew up, loss of loved ones and therefore the conclusion that I have lost love. The loss of the street and buddies, the loss of friends from school, the loss of the country in which I was born... slowly, or not so slowly, all that went into some quiet oblivion, and continued to live as a moving image only in my memories.
Sometimes, when all this happens to us, we are of young age and little wisdom, we do not have enough of life experience and independence to understand what is actually happening. We feel like after a shipwreck, lost at the sea of life. There is no one anywhere, no land in sight and yet we are alive and here. Just, where is that here…?
Such a sense of self can follow us throughout the entire life. Grief and mourning have their own independent flow. They are not like some other emotions that can, to some extent, be contained and directed. Deep grief has a life of its own. And it often remains in us like apparently still water, we forget that it is there... Until one day it is moved by breeze that blows from one side, moves the deep waters and stirs the settled remains of unshed tears. Sometimes we don't even know why we cry, nor does the tear have a name... we just know that we can cry and sob endlessly, but it doesn’t get really any easier. These are the only tears that can bring relief, but very often do not.
And that is why we have to live with the loss. We have no other choice. The longer we live, the more losses we will roll over our hearts and heads. We usually cannot get back the things and people, the times that have past. In this acceptance lies the key to the most powerful transformation of consciousness from the mud of the most difficult emotions. If we, the humans, could only withstand the intensity of the emotions that live within us... If we could only withstand life, its tenderness, power and love, inside us... And then what? What if we survive it all?
For each of us, the answer is extremely personal and precise. It is the moment when we move from the ashes to the resurrection, it is the period of transition, the period of moving from one state of awareness to adapting the reality, which already exists or has not yet been created - which is waiting for us.
And what if we don't survive? It is easier to calm the water, to not stir the sludge on the bottom and live as if all this did not happen to us. Then, like a chewing gum that melts on the asphalt and we don't notice, so we step on it, all these tears and emotions stretch and stick. The more I move my foot and the shoe away from the melted chewing gum, cursing the one who left it there, it becomes more and more difficult to untangle the thin threads of the gum that break and stick even more to the side of the shoe... and reach even the pants.
It is impossible to live with all these unprocessed losses without them invisibly clinging to our identity, to each thing we want to do, to every relationship we have.
And this process also has its own timing. It is as if it had turned against me ever since I spat on that old wooden pole. The only thing I can do is listen to it, recognize it and, with tears welling up in my eyes, I can say: I'm here. I have nowhere else to go.
This shall pass too…
* For the younger generations, the expression "spit" refers to a person who is hiding and manages to get to the starting point of the hide and seek game, where the seeker was counting with his eyes shut, and to "spit". Then, he won in outwitting the seeker and was not found.
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