Most people think of grief as a heavy hitter of an emotion that only overtakes us when we have lost a loved one. The truth is we experience many losses over a lifetime and some of these losses are deeply anchored into our identity. We find in aging, to survive and thrive we must let some treasured ideas of ourselves go and it hurts and there is grieving. We are heartbroken.
If you live long enough, you will know what it is to say goodbye to loved ones and what it is to say goodbye to an idea of the self as a certain story or enactment. We love these ideas of ourselves as we love our people. They define us and bring a comfortable familiarity with the world around us. "I am this way and it is just how I am!" a person may say all of their lives. Sometimes this must change. As in the person who was avidly active in their life and they get a debilitating disease or dismemberment and must re-frame their entire life story. So it is with aging and losing abilities and vitality. This involves grief and it is no less impactful than the loss of a parent or partner to face and move forward in our lives with these kinds of changes. We can feel distanced from our center and our own sense of godliness or control of the situation.
Hafiz writes about how being separated from any form of love in our lives, whether for the self or the other, displaces us from our spiritual center. We must honor this new arrangement with our tears...because we are human and we have hearts that must be washed in them.
Thank you for listening.
https://pixabay.com/music/world-sufi-dance-109190/
Music: I've been saving this song, seemingly for this post. Marianne Faithful and Nick Cave singing, The Crane Wife. This is a song about another kind of grief in living with having betrayed a promise and gaining a new, horrific awareness of how we impact the lives of others. Becoming suddenly aware of how self centered we are is alarming and grievous. There is so very little about being a human being that doesn't involve the heart breaking in some way. This song certainly captures that feeling.
Each feather, it fell from skin
'Til threadbare and she grew thin
How were my eyes so blinded?
Each feather, it fell from skin
The original post in this series of poems by Hafiz (including an addendum regarding the authenticity of these poems) can be found here.
The Gift: Poems by Hafiz and translated by Daniel Ladinsky can be purchased here.