Reflecting on a sense of loss & a loss of sense
Presents/Presence by John O’Donohue
I give you an emptiness
I give you a plenitude
unwrap them carefully
-one’s as fragile as the other–
and when you thank me
I’ll pretend not to notice the doubt in your voice
when you say they’re just what you wanted.
Put them on the table by your bed.
When you wake in the morning
they’ll, have gone through the door of sleep
into your head. Wherever you go
they’ll go with you and
wherever you are you’ll wonder,
smiling about the fullness
you can’t add to and the emptiness
that you can fill.
2020 has been a year of polarities, of extremes. We feel a profound loss of connection, yet we feel over-connected. Our world has changed completely at a eye-watering pace, yet every day feels feels monotonous, like groundhog day. The very breath I need to stay alive, the human touch I crave, can kill me. Sometimes I still feel as if none of this is real: my body is in this new reality, but my soul needs to catch up.
I am struggling to stay present to the here and now. The temptation to escape into nostalgia or distraction and busyness is powerful. I have never been a binge-watcher, but I find myself drawn to watching simple stories set in beautiful places almost mindlessly. I know that escape and denial are not healthy in the long term, they are coping mechanisms, scaffolds. In order to move on, I need to allow myself to feel and acknowledge the trauma and loss of these times.
The notion of loss has come up in conversations and in my reading list a lot lately. Sometimes it is accompanied by anger and rebellion. Other times sadness. Mostly disorientation. Many of us have been avoiding dealing with the enormity of our loss. We cling to our denial that this is real and permanent. What makes it more complex is the asymmetry of it: For some, the loss has been extremely tangible: loved ones, livelihoods, homes, businesses, health. For others, like me, it is more intangible and nebulous.
I have been fortunate: I and everyone I love are still healthy. I still have meaningful work and an income. I am sheltering in a comfortable house with a husband and three dogs for company. I have food on the table and a warm bed. So who am I to complain about loss, when there are so many others who are far worse off than I am? It almost seems an insult to those who are dealing with “real loss.” Increasingly I find this split, this polarity between gratitude and grief unhelpful. I need to permit myself to grieve, acknowledge the loss, and let go: gratitude and grief are not mutually exclusive.
Articulating what has been lost
While I miss hugs, and leisurely dinners and trips to exotic places, the losses I find myself preoccupied with are deeper, perhaps more existential …
- Loss of a sense of real human connection: Beyond missing being in others’ physical presence, I miss a sense of humanity. People have become objects, disembodied faces on a screen that can be switched off or muted at will. Again, a polarity: I miss people and feel “peopled out” at the same time. And linked to this, I am experiencing a …
- Loss of a sense of security and trust: I wonder when I will ever feel secure again in a crowded space. People have become potential disease vectors that I need to keep at a distance. It feels like a form of innocence has been lost, and I don’t know if it can be recovered. I am concerned that the way I view others and how others view me will be permanently changed.
- Loss of a sense of expectancy around the future. A friend of mine recently said, “I am exhausted by the future.” That effervescent sense of a tomorrow that will be better than today is fading. Hope becomes a struggle, something that requires energy to maintain.
- Loss of freedom and agency. Like many other countries, South Africa has been in various stages of lockdown now for over four months. At its strictest, we were not allowed to leave our homes except for grocery shopping or emergencies. Freedoms I took for granted, gone. Now, while many of these restrictions have been lifted, I still find my freedom curtailed. Not by external authority but by my own values and fears. Just because I’m allowed to see my elderly mother doesn’t mean I should. Just because I am allowed to have a drink in a pub doesn’t make it safe.
- Probably the most profound loss of all is a pervasive loss of sense itself. The old stories and meanings that helped us make sense of the world are no longer relevant. More often than not, I find myself at a complete loss to make sense of the news, of people’s behaviour, of reality itself. It is as if my brain cannot make sense of what I am seeing, like it cannot accept that it is fact, not fiction: seemingly rational people believing and advocating that a virus that has killed hundreds of thousands of people is a hoax; multitudes willfully congregating without masks or distancing and then insisting on medical treatment when they inevitably get sick; police officers, our supposed protectors, murdering innocent people; corrupt officials stealing food from the hungry people they are supposed to serve; the continued and willful destruction of our planet even while viruses, fires and cyclones are screaming final warnings at us. And in the midst of it all, leaders who overtly put profit and short term gains first and actively steal elections, sow division and hate. It is as if someone plucked me out of the world I semi-understood and unceremoniously dumped me in a place that looks more or less the same but makes no sense at all.
It is mostly because of this that I have written so little in the last few months. I want to write, but I don’t have words. Amy Sackville articulates this so eloquently: “And what can I possibly offer, in writing, by way of tonic or solace? This isn’t about writer’s block, because I’m not even trying (unless that’s what writer’s block is, really — the not trying). The intention to write, the possibility of writing, recedes endlessly into the same incomprehensible future. Writing is speaking across time, across space. And space and time are making little sense to me. How can I calibrate myself to the world without being out in it? What is the future I am speaking to? I am struggling to make connections, to do the work of sentences, to find words. I can’t go anywhere, can’t get anywhere. I can only languish in the present, because the past is a warren of nostalgia and forgetting and the future is too much to contemplate for long. By “for long”, I mean for the space of a minute, or a protracted hour in the early 4am light, or constantly, at all times, on a level that’s not quite subliminal.” (1)
In times like these, I find solace in art and poetry. When reality defies logic and rationality, poetry illuminates new meanings. In the words of David White, poetry is a language against which we have no defenses.
WINTER GRIEF by David Whyte
Let the rest
in this rested place
rest for you.
Let the birds sing
and the geese call
and the sky race
from west to east
when you cannot raise
a wing to fly.
Let evening
trace your loss
in the stonework
against a fading sky.
So that
you can give up
and give in
and be given back to,
so that you can let
winter
come and live
fully inside you,
so that
you can
retrace
the loving path
of heartbreak
that brought you here.
So you can cry alone
and be alone
so you can let
yourself alone
to be lost,
so you can
let the one
you have lost
alone, so that
you can let
the one
you have lost
have their
own life
and even
their own
death
without you.
So the world
and everyone
who has ever lived
and ever died
can come and go
as they please.
So you can
let yourself
not know, what
not knowing
means.
So that
you can be
even more generous
in your letting go
than they
were
in their leaving.
So that you can
let winter
be winter.
So that you can let
the world alone
to think of spring.
…
From THE BELL AND THE BLACKBIRD, Poetry by David Whyte
APRIL 2018 © David Whyte and Many Rivers Press
References:
