Breaking and Healing Through Our Fifth Season

All seasons lead to our fifth season, a time of aging when we are called to let the mysterious molecule of health be our teacher.

21 hours ago

Mark Nepo,

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Isn’t the first claim of life to find the courage, whatever the cost, to carry on, to reach out and connect with others, to keep reaching out? — Diana Chapman Walsh¹

The instant a bone breaks, the two ends begin to reach for each other. While we are in pain, the process of healing begins. In a similar way, this deep, mysterious force of life is at work in us when we feel broken and in disarray. And we are called to let this mysterious molecule of health be our teacher. We are called to stay in conversation with the paradox of breaking and healing as we trip through the difficult yet endearing terrain of aging.

The same mysterious force of life animates our hearts. When near the suffering of others, our inborn care will reach for others immediately, if we don’t hesitate or block the love. It seems our lifelong work is not to find or summon the love but to put down our hesitations and let the love that is within us rise. In this regard, compassion is as natural as the surge of underground springs or the swell of tides. We simply have to get out of our own way.

Yet, there are times when whatever we do for ourselves or for others seems useless. It’s in these moments, when the healing seems beyond all understanding, that the faith of our compassion is tested to the fullest. When someone we love is dying or succumbing to the labyrinth of dementia or when someone is broken beyond repair, we are called to keep reaching out all the more.

When someone is in a coma, we can still send our love to the place in them that might still receive. When someone we love is being twisted by addiction or is tangled in such a sublime sensitivity that they can’t seem to survive in the world, we can still love them. This is the marathon of compassion: to stay the course without turning away or giving ourselves away. And no one quite knows how to do this. We simply learn as much as our open heart will let in.

We can’t measure exactly how our care diminishes the suffering in the world, but only know that it does.

In this way, the effects of our love cannot be measured. We can’t measure exactly how our tears add to the sea, but only know that they do. Likewise, we can’t measure exactly how our care diminishes the suffering in the world, but only know that it does.

I have a dear friend, Tom, whom I have known for thirty years. He is a good man who is fierce with his love. In our men’s group, we were talking about these very things, when he rose from a depth within to say: “There’s a muscle of love that carries us when we care for what is heartbreaking, giving our all when there is nothing left to do but stay and be present.”

In truth, we may never know the impact of our love. We can only respond to the need for love by tossing our care into the canyon of suffering like a pebble, accepting that we’ll never hear it land. Tom went on to say, “And it’s a privilege to give to what is heartbreaking. I wouldn’t have it any other way.”

Over time, I’ve come to see that despair comes from being enclosed and having no perspective, no horizon in view. When in the throes of difficulty, things get worse when we’re isolated from the rest of life. Healing often resides in regaining the larger perspective of life, which can right-size whatever difficulty we are going through. In this regard, the gift of true compassion is that it helps us restore our connection to the larger web of life.

For pain is insidious in how it makes us collapse on ourselves. The acuteness of pain traps us in the jaggedness of whatever is broken. And so, we often need the care of others to reconnect us to the rest of life so it might restore us. Feeling the pain and allowing ourselves to be held in our pain can connect us to the ever-present life-force that exists in all things. Receiving that movement of life-force can soften or even dissipate our pain. When collapsed on ourselves, everything seems dark and random. When taking in the life-force that exists in all things, there is a wave of healing that can cradle us.

Sailors have long known that going on deck in the midst of a storm won’t make the sea calm, but the larger perspective of the horizon will restore some balance that can help them move through the disturbance without getting seasick.

Keeping the horizon, or the larger perspective of life, in view is at the heart of all spiritual practices and all forms of meditation. This is why walks in nature — to great mountains, near great oceans, near vast, open spaces — are always healing and calming. And this is why the steadfast love of others is always healing and calming. For the presence of such care always returns us to the vastness that is our home under all trouble.

Staying present to the pain and difficulty of others, regardless of how powerless we feel, gives everyone involved perspective. The thirteenth-century poet and mystic Hadewijch of Antwerp spoke about the mysterious power of love to steady us in the storms of life in one of her poems:

[How Love] commands in storm or in stillness.
This is a marvel beyond my understanding,
which fills my whole heart.²

It is humbling to discover that when we give, we participate in a lineage of care that has endured since the beginning of time. Inevitably, the things we go through, both wondrous and painful, lead us, if truly shared, to the common well of being where we all drink. And drinking from that well makes us vulnerable and transparent. And somehow, it’s through that tender opening that we are restored. We are always better when the love flows than when it is blocked.

NOTES
1 The Claims of Life by Diana Chapman Walsh. Boston, MA: MIT Press, 2023, p. 330.
2 Hadewijch of Antwerp, translated by Oliver Davies, from The Soul Is Here for Its Own Joy: Sacred Poems from Many Cultures, edited by Robert Bly. NY: Ecco Press, 1995, p. 119.

With over a million copies sold, poet, author and storyteller Mark Nepo has moved and inspired seekers all over the world with his #1 New York Times bestseller The Book of Awakening. He has been called “one of the finest spiritual guides of our time.” The Fifth Season is Mark’s newest book.