Manchester.
My beloved Manchester.
They say terrorists and we once again fall down the rabbit hole. Terror. The prevalent pulse (or interference of) pushed on to the people. And of course not just in our city either. All the wars that rage all over the world. To live in a heightened state of panicked alert or urgency on the one hand, and a numbness to feeling any of the nuanced subtleties of human feeling on the other!
For living in the state of terror is a permanent cry for help, for safety, to being on guard, and on the look out for danger. Constant danger, for our wellbeing, for, well, being.
To live in terror is not to be soft with and in the world and when something like this happens, with its approximation or reality of death it changes us. We feel our vulnerability. We remember, or are reminded of, our fragility. Our flesh and blood so easily shattered. Our light put out and our pulse ended indefinitely.
Sobering hey?!
Why does it always take such a meeting with death to remind us of our vulnerability? That our habitualised state of armour and defence and bravado and separateness is an illusion, a shame, a waste.
Is it because it connects us to grief? Are we always so so close to grief? For isn’t the other side or beneath the depths of grief where lies our joy? Isn’t grief just a state of love in a way? For we cannot experience grief if we are not also experiencing love, for another, for others, but essentially, for our self, our mortality, our small numbered days and years on this earth, alive.
Our mortality.
We are all going to die. Eventually. Even if we live to a grand olde, ripe number of years.
And I am not being morbid here folks.
You see we do our damned best to avoid, prolong, evade, deny and simply not be in any kind of relationship with and to death!
Is it not true that so many of us are more afraid of life, of living fully and deeply and truly and madly with as much love as we can throw around, than we are of death?!
When we face the grief after another attack of terror that slaps us so crudely and rudely our hearts cannot help but be blasted open. We become open hearted whether we like it or not. (Or we fight it this open heart place with even more fear). The irony? In this place, in our tenderness and fragility and vulnerability and innocence and humanness and rawness, we are alive.
Alive.
And stronger than ever. Somehow invincible holding hands with our grief.
If facing death is the ultimate fear, then once we have, whether we have willingly chosen to (like a fuckin heart warrior!) or not, then in many ways we have nothing left to fear. Our spirit cannot be held prisoner. Our heart, though bruised and sore, can never break but stretch (which hurts and hurts some more!).
A choice. A choice to respond with a bigger heart.
Such horrors have always existed it seems. This war and murder and slaughter are as old as time itself.
Don’t armour back up even more. Be in and with your grief. Be in and with your rage. Be in and with your incomprehension, and desire for avenging and revenging. But don’t act upon these for now. Let them move through you. Let them move you. Let them flood you open.
To love. Only love. Always love.
I don’t have any answers to how or what or why. Probably most of us don’t. But we can hold hands, and in that we become stronger and united and in this together.
Let’s not let terror take our humanity and heart. Let’s not allow terror to turn us away from the pulse of who we are. We all have this pulse. It’s the one heart. One love. Always.
May you be well. May you rest in the deep peace and oceanic ease and beauty of who you are.
Oh and love each other, fiercely, and with as much dare as your courageous and wondrous heart can muster.
Aho xxx