Into the Wilderness: Story 61
The scenario. You’re eating Cheerios with oat milk, stepping snow-logged boots onto your commuter bus or simply sitting at your desk with a nice cold foam brew when it happens. A memory laden with rage or despair roils out of your synapses and your lungs clench in a breathless remembrance. Usually, it’s a silly memory— the time you almost slept with your sorority sister’s fiancé or you broke a chair when sitting on it at 200 pounds (not that either of these moments have happened to me). The pain wrestles with your lungs and diaphragm, reminding you that life is precious and can be unexpectedly short. Then it passes as if nothing happened at all.
I had one of these moments today.
Mine was rage at a former good-friend-colleague I trusted before learning that this word combination can be an oxymoron. It flashed through my brain and bronchi faster than a California brush fire, reminding me that I can lose everything I love and hold dear, including my life, in a cacophony of crackling flames, and Bob’s your uncle.
Here’s how I interpret these moments.
Hellooooo feelings! In this moment, I am more than sinew and bone. I’m a complex creature whose brain function is surprisingly and stealthily healthy. I.Am.Human.
This temporary flash dance in the emotional abyss is good. It confirms the file-storage-strength of our brains. Can’t remember anything? No worries, it’s slotted in your brain somewhere and can magic-hand flip out when you least expect it. Your brain has not yet forgotten what a fork is. You’re good.
It also recalls your emotional resonance. You are a feeling human being, not a frozen egg-head. This moment has surfaced to show your emotions exist, an incredible feat in a world of lost empathy and compassion. Your opportunity is to identify and name the feeling. When my rage surfaced earlier today, I said: “Ah, there you are grief. You once cared deeply, you may even still do.” In other words, I share the human experience of love and betrayal. I am part of the hidden Jungian jungle of collective loss. I am not the only one.
This lava-flow memory is a piece of me, like an alter emerging to represent a broken or misplaced part of me. I was once an executive who put relationships and people first, before profit, bottom line, and orders from the top. I had— and still have— integrity and authenticity. Good.For.Me.
The advantage of this alter moment is reintegration. Little Loss Linda (give her a name!) has done her job. She took care of me in a painful moment, enfolding my sadness and anger in her Gumby-stretch arms and remolding a heart willing to be filled and sharded again. She will file this moment with care, wriggling her deft fingers to retrieve it— and other like memories— when I need the emotional resonance and ping.
Usually, our automatic response to this kind of pain is to get rid of it, forever. “I’m done with that,” we say. Or “I’ve moved on. I fixed it.” But what if this approach misses the growth opportunity we were meant to have? What if we need this memory to be the person we’ve become today? Ignoring it is like not fixing a cement chunk fallen from a brick wall. The wall will eventually collapse without this important piece. You need it to be the sturdy whole.
Today’s moment lasted no more than a few seconds, like most of these moments do. I gained, however, a universal entanglement (to use some quantum theory) with unknown numbers of others— the Jungian collective experience and connection as well as the unseen ability to effect the lives of others. This is the nature of quantum mechanics, which is scientific proof of the woo woo witchery of human connection and (un)consciousness women have known from the beginning of time.
This is what I learned today. It’s also what happens when my husband asks if I’m publishing a blog this week— because “I usually have done at least one by this time each week”— and I say, “if I can think of something to write about.” It’s a nice break from politics, about which I have plenty to say. For example, did anyone out there other than me read TikTok’s new user agreement issued under Larry and son? This is one crazy piece of Orwellian rant cum legalese. If you haven’t read it, I encourage you to do so. It will likely be the topic of a future blog.
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