When the World Breaks Your Heart
I see articles in the news about Sudan, and Yemen, and Venezuela, and Syria (still, Syria), and Gaza, and so so many more places … and sometimes it feels like too much when there is also Alabama and Georgia and Detroit and Flint (still, Flint) and threats to protected land and school shooting after nightclub shooting after religious shooting after concert shooting after just-because-I’m-pissed shooting and hate crime after hate crime and babies being stolen from their mothers’ arms at our very own border …
And I genuinely understand how people can say “America First” – because there is more than enough pain and suffering to go around within these 50 states … and people say “before we take care of people “out there” let’s take care of the people in our own backyard” …
And to that I say, yes.
Let’s do that.
And what if we started to realize that the WORLD is our backyard?
What if we realized that the pain and suffering of those in Sudan and Yemen and Venezuela and Guatemala and Syria (still, Syria) and Gaza and so so many more places is no less worthy of our compassion and empathy than the pain and suffering in Alabama and Georgia and Detroit and Flint (still, Flint)?
Because everywhere people are being killed by guns and raped by toxic men seeking to conquer and babies are being ripped from their mothers’ arms for more reasons than I can count and children are being forced to grow up way too fast instead of learning to climb trees and play with fairies like my daughter has the privilege of doing, and why why why does she have that privilege and they do not?!
What if all our suffering is One?
And what if your heart will not crack into a million pieces and explode out of your chest if you allow yourself to care about ALL of these people who are suffering around the world …
I know it feels like it will. I know it feels like your heart does not have space for all that caring, that it does not have space to acknowledge and feel the hurt of all the pain and suffering of all these people …
But what if it does??
What if, just as our hearts grow ten sizes with each child we bear (when we think we can’t possibly love another child as much as our first or our second, and yet we do), what if our hearts have the infinite ability to expand? What if our hearts have all the room in the world to care about everyone, everywhere? What if we didn’t need to pick and choose whose suffering was worthy of our attention and our care and our rage and our uproar and our compassionate action? What if, the more we look AT it instead of looking AWAY, our hearts expanded?
Every time we look our hearts break. And looking at so many things that make your heart break feels like an unbearable shattering. But I promise your heart will go on beating.
And the more we allow ourselves to care and acknowledge, the more we allow ourselves to see and feel, the more we can become part of the solution. Because you cannot heal something you cannot (or refuse) to see.
This is what I am practicing now. I am practicing not looking away.
It feels like my heart will shatter with each and every look … and yet, I am still standing. My heart is still beating. It expands to hold and rock and sing and care for the pain of those who are suffering; to be a mother to all who are in need of love and tender care (because that is all of us, isn’t it?)
So today I implore you … don’t look away. Turn towards the pain. Let yourself feel it. The whole world is your backyard.
