“So the stars really go on forever?”
“That’s what appears to be true, at least that’s all we know at this point. The universe just keeps growing.”
“And numbers also go forever. I used to think I could only count up to 100. But now I know I could count forever.”
“Yes, baby, that’s also true.”
“Well that’s how I love you. Like you can’t count it and it just goes on forever.”
—silence as I let myself soak in that kind of love —
“That’s how I love you, too, my girl.” The words could barely be spoken.
Soon after this exchange, she fell asleep. And in that moment it felt as though we were suspended in the secrets of the universe. That there really is no beginning, and the sense of limitless goes far beyond anything my mind can grasp.
Inevitably somewhere around 4am she will wake up unable to fall back asleep as the kitten bites her toes. Sometimes the kitten wasn’t really even in her room, but one room away felt like a canyon. The kitten probably feels like a good reason to come crawl into bed with us, her parents, and nestle between us and feel safe.
My little girl has just about always manifested anxiety. She feels precariousness in a way I thought was mine alone.
But that night, as she said the most profound words to me about unconditional love I have perhaps ever encountered, I just relished her wisdom and let myself turn into that stardust that they say we all came from. Whatever formed us, that’s what I felt.
And I wonder if what I perceive as precariousness, and the lifted energy that it brings with it, is a gift in disguise. Like a great big falcon — large wingspan and power but light as air.
We come here knowing we will leave here. That’s the deal and the contract — we sign up for life and at the same time we sign up for death. There are the little deaths and endings that are peppered throughout our lifetimes, and also the final departure from the form we inhabit. Knowing that, what are our options? As a mother, I have become so acutely aware of my anxiety. My fears of some terrible illness taking me away young, of a homicidal desperately broken man opening fire in the grocery store and ending the lives of my family, of a car crash unexpected and torrential leaving my children parentless. These anxieties used to feel like a curse. And they still don’t feel comfortable. How could they? This is the extreme damage and the ravaged heart that has to find a way through rubble just to catch enough air to fully expand and contract again.
The curse, like all curses in myth, is always a task, a riddle, a quest of sorts. Something that I believed was about managing symptoms and not feeling “this way” anymore, but at some point I had to put on my cloak and walk out into the deep dark night and face what has been stalking me my whole life.
When you’ve never really been on solid ground, you instinctively sink pretty deep. My childhood and my adolescence and my karma and my contracts and my past lives and my ancestors, and all the things that add up to now, lead me deeper into myself in this moment. And this complete truth is revealed, that if I’m going to die one day, which I am, as are you, I might as well do something outrageous while I’m here. Love beyond all reason. Forgive beyond all reason. Surrender beyond all reason. Until I change the rules and build a new grid where we can live far beyond being victims and far beyond even being survivors… But being true lovers. True forgivers. Hearts are meant to keep opening, into a limitlessness that the mind cannot hold. It feels like breaking open over and over again. Because you are breaking the boundaries that you thought were the edges. At least that is the architectural possibility in my heart. And I believe it to be true for the rest of us, too. Of course it hurts. It’s a pain that you are choosing. Because you could probably just manage the symptoms and not have to go this far into yourself. But when given the choice, why wouldn’t you find out what unconditional love really means. The universe is echoed and mirrored within us.
