I wasn’t able to post on Wednesday. I had no internet or power but I wrote anyway. I tried to do the same thing yesterday but that just did not work. Life got very unmanageable quickly and I spent the next two days attempting to navigate life without power. I will admit some of that time was spent deciding I would invest in a whole home generator...seems prudent at this point.
The devastation of the Pacific Palisades is unbelievable. It is Maui all over again. So many peoples' homes just gone. Beautiful landmarks reduced to rubble. People displaced, exhausted and grieving. I will stop short of the animals, because I just can't think about that and function in this life.
I wasn't able to write yesterday because I was too triggered. My nervous system in flight or fight mode for the last two days and I just became this jangling nerve ending that was unable to attend to much of anything. I do not think I have ever had the experience of feeling the PTSD as PTSD before. I knew what was happening and my body and mind were on high alert. It took all morning just to find a place to shower and charge all the devices. Everything about life and living got harder and felt overwhelming. I was not in harm's way once, but you could not have convinced my nervous system of that fact.
I know so many people who lost everything but their lives. So many people in community that now have no place to commune. The devastation is complete, surrounding and all encompassing. And I sit idle, praying for the fires to end.
If I felt this way, 60 miles away, how must all of them be feeling? I felt so lost and I wasn’t even involved...really.
I sat on my usual Zoom meeting Wednesday night, the living room lit with candles and listened to a friend of mine share about losing his home. He found out he needed to leave by a knock at the door and then had less than five minutes to go. He lost everything shortly thereafter. But there he was on the meeting, sharing his experience, strength and hope. There he was just showing up and giving the rest of us hope as he began to unpack what had just happened.
And it occurred to me...fire devastated his life. And at the very same time, fire was providing me with some quality of life. The very same element contained the power to destroy and the power to heal. It was all about the circumstances.
It reminded me that in all bad things, there is good. And in all good things, there is bad. Life is a series of circumstances unfolding and we never know which way it is going to cut. The same element that was waging war and destruction a few miles to the south, was also providing me light and heat in order to proceed in my life.
It is such a mixed bag. Such a hard lesson. So much pain and loss and destruction but I know from my own previous experience that there will be good to come in all of this. Never really able to answer the question “was it worth what was lost?” Never. But there will be good things that come of all this awfulness. It is already happening. The people who take in the displaced. The stories of connection, the valiant and triumphant dedication of merit of one human being to another. There will be pain, and loss and sadness. Those things will abound. How could they not?
But there will also be so many stories of resiliency. There will be stories of love and charity and humanity being at its best. The common tragedy will give rise to a new day where the foundations will be remade, rekindled and rejuvenated. It is how we live this life. We walk through the debris of the former lives we lived and find a way to accept and allow the one we are presented with. Some of us will fail, repeatedly. None of us will ever be the same again. Some of us will struggle to regain any semblance of normalcy, peace or calm. Some of us will be lost in the tragedy, perhaps for the rest of our days.
But there will be a rising. There will be a swell of good. There will be safety and peace again. Nature seems to require both: destruction and construction all the time. Things are always falling apart and coming together. Sometimes the knitting of both seems so incongruent and displacing, we cannot fathom how anything good shall ever occur again. For some the cost will prove too much. For others, the loss and devastation provides the fire and they rise like Phoenixes from the ashes.
Regardless, we humans shall plod forward. With some grace, dignity and knowledge that what does not kill us teaches us the lessons we need to learn completely regardless of our willingness or acceptance of those lessons. Life is not fair. Life can be a total cunt. But it is just life, after all. We just get this one and we all are given a choice with each moment we are granted to decide to look for the good or perish in the horribleness of life and living. In each moment, we have a choice to be the vehicle, the container for both, to embrace our humanity with love and service and kindness and understanding.
I will continue to pray for everyone, everywhere who is in harm’s way. Who lacks personal, emotional and physical safety. I will breathe in the pain and loss and breathe out light and love. While I sit motionless on my meditation cushion, I do my human best to match calamity with serenity...again, still.
One fucking day at a time.
And in so doing, I grant space for others to do the same. Badly, hardly, lovingly each moment as it comes. I stand witness to all the opportunities for growth and change and love and peace that shall exist in the coming days. And I will try to remember that in all good, there is some bad. But in all bad, there is some good. And I am going to focus on that...being a finder of the good within all the horrible. And try to be a beacon for all of those wandering lost in the dark.
I know that like wildfire, love, unconditionally given also spreads a 100 feet per second...
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