Saved from Saving the World
Sometimes I find myself swimming in a sea of overwhelm. It happens when I open the apps, or god-forbid when someone turns on a news channel. It especially happens when I see us harming one another, as though we are not all doing the very best that we can with what little we have here.
We are in short supply of that which we need: security, intimacy, support, but have en masse the things we don’t need: trauma, coping mechanisms, the deep seated fear that nothing (including ourselves) will ever be enough.
"God, this place is broken!" I say. I am not sure if I am talking to me or IT or both. “There sure is a lot to fix here!"
My social are filled with all the broken things happening in the world. Things shouldn’t be this broken. Things should be less broke now than they’ve ever been. But it seems when things feel bleak and when the weather feels particularly cold, that they are still broken, more broken in new and creative ways…creative treacherous ways. The redemptive arc isn’t arcing. Or at least not quickly enough for me.
When I talk to my guides or God or whatever it is out there that answers me, it reminds me that things are better. And they are worse. And this grand drama is FOR us, all working to give us the experience we are seeking. It reminds me of all the dimensions where things are perfectly perfect and how boring and unenjoyable they are without this dimension to offer it’s duality to the cosmic dance. It reminds me gently of the prevailing law of free will, the empowerment of choice, and the illusion we must create to experience the duality of non-free will.
“You’re masochistic,” I say. “I know,” It says back.
"How do I fix it all?” I say. “You don’t” It says back.
“What DO I do then!?” I ask. (I’m getting angry at this point in the conversation.)
“Stop trying to fix it all,” it says. And then it has the audacity to act like that’s the answer, when it’s clearly not the answer.
“NO no no. You’re going to expand on this,” I demand. It laughs with mirth. (Mirth! Can you believe that!)
“Do not fix it all. In fact do not fix anything, for though you perceive this world as broken into pieces, it really is exactly where it is meant to be, undergoing slow march, after slow march toward a new experience. Can’t you feel it?”
And I can. Sometimes. In the way that my children smile, and in the way my son exclaims, “My friend said boys can’t love boys, but I told him they ABSOLUTELY can.” In the way my friends playfully accuse me of hustling them at poker when I got a 4 of a kind of on the last hand of the night. In the way my baby niece throws her larger-than-life baby tantrums, while my sister watched in amused desperate horror (some could call it mirth.) In the way that my cat’s fur feels and the way my dog drops the ball at my feet and barely has the will power to let me pick it up to throw it again. In the way that the snow looks when it’s falling from the sky, and again when it lands in a gentle cushioning blanket, hushing the whole world for a bit. In a good night’s sleep, and in the first drink of my morning coffee. In the way their face looks when they realize what has them stuck, and the excitement of realizing, it won’t always be this way, now that I know why.
I still feel joy in spite of the myraid of reasons not to.
I ask again, (softer this time.) “What do I do then?”
“Live your life. Make your way towards as perfect a world as you can, with your particular existence, your particular set of people, places, and things, and your particular gifts. Find others who want what you know, and show them. And above all, find love. For the world, though you see it as broken almost beyond repair, and for every single soul you meet. And do this really, really well.”
I remember for the hundredth… the millionth time that the world does not need me to save it. It just needs me to arrive in my body in the truest way I can, to feel, to emote, to be moved by my human softness towards others, then together, towards a “ better world than this.”
“Okay,” I say, and I get back to work, knowing that my contributions to this place are small, but profound and exactly what they’re meant to be. My shoulders drop from my ears, the tears clear from my eyes, and my work moves the dial.. at least in my particular existence.
Dear Heart, can you see that you too are off the hook for saving the whole world? That to do your great and glorious work of changing the world means Living? Being? and most of all Loving?
