Missing an email

Hi Reader,

The email below is unfinished and unedited. I only realized this afternoon that I failed to schedule it. I gave my word that I would send on Wednesdays, though, and don’t have time to polish it up later, so here it is. Hopefully it doesn’t have too many incomplete thoughts.

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Since my son Alden was born a few days ago, I’ve been feeling very emotional. So far, I notice the emotions are connected to two stories in particular: the story of hiding, and the story of growing. I’d like to share these stories with you.

I don’t know if I’d go so far as to say this is cosmically true or anything like that, but it seems to me that before we’re conceived and after we die we must be a part of everything. (Well, of course we’re a part of everything in every moment, but what I’m pointing to is the possibility that we are, in those times, in some way aware that we are part of everything in a way that we aren’t and can’t be when we are human.) It’s pretty well known at this point that the stuff our bodies are made of was forged in the hearts of long-dead stars. That’s far out enough for anyone, but only has to do with our physical existence. What we know less about is what the human spirit, or consciousness (if they are even the same thing), is. If, as the old bible says, our bodies come from and return to dust, what is the nature of the “dust” that makes up the part of us that is more-than-physical?

These kinds of questions are a distraction, of course. They’re a way for me to hide from the emotional impact of the story. There’s nothing wrong with this. As a human being there’s no way to avoid hiding. I’ll try to elaborate.

Sometimes I get the sense that there’s something I used to know, some ultimate piece of knowledge, which I can’t quite recall. I’ve had a few experiences over the years where that thing feels like it’s right on the tip of my tongue, like I could reach out and grasp it again if I wasn’t just so human. I don’t know this for sure, but the story I tell myself is that this constantly half-remembered thing is what it was like to be everything before I was born.

I don’t know how to describe the experience, really. In a way it’s incredibly frustrating. Like, there’s this thing that’s really amazing and I can almost tell you exactly what it is and how amazing it is but actually I can’t tell you anything. Just this handful of paltry words. But in a way it’s the ghost of a hint that everything is alright. That not a single thing is out of place in all of reality. Not in me, not in you, not in the whole world. It makes no sense to my intellect, looking out at the world and seeing that it’s such an obvious mess. But that feeling is still there. I think it must be more than the ghost of the memory of religious experiences I had when I was younger. Maybe you think that’s what it is. Maybe that is what it is. Maybe, if it puts me in touch with the kind of life I want to live, it doesn’t matter what it is. Maybe it can be useful even if it isn’t True-with-a-capital-T.

Anyway, I was talking about hiding. The way in which hiding is unavoidable is related to what I just wrote: from the reference point that I used to be aware of being part of everything and now am not, I am hidden from myself. If I am hidden from myself, I am hiding from myself. I can’t see my whole, true self.

And, there is also a way in which hiding is avoidable. I could keep these thoughts to myself. I didn’t have to choose to share this with you. This is a very current example, of course, but I bet you don’t have to look very far to see some of the ways you hide in your own life. You have an opinion that you refrain from sharing, a thought you keep to yourself, or an emotion that you stuff down because it’s not appropriate to the situation. We all have things about ourselves that we don’t like and aren’t proud of, and it’s entirely natural and understandable that we would hide them from one another. There’s nothing wrong with this. As I said, it’s part of being human.

But one day I will die, and when that happens maybe that spirit/consciousness/whatever nonphysical part of me will regain its awareness of being part of the Whole. If so, then life offers me a couple different opportunities: I can relax into the fact that hiding is inevitable. Or, I can do my best not to hide in that second, avoidable, way I described.

Both opportunities are what I might call sacred. I’m only alive for a blink of the Universe’s eye. Might as well use it to practice all the things I won’t get to do when I’m not alive. At the same time, what a way to honor the place I came from and will return to—the source of all things—than to try to be a reflection of its un-hiding-ness during my short life.

Because, really, what we see when we look around us is it. It’s reality (or at least as much of it as our little human senses can discern). It’s not trying to hide or avoid us like we do with ourselves and each other. It’s just right there, doing its thing. It’s constantly revealing itself to us, both in individual ways and in collective understandings. Look at how much we know about the nature of reality that we didn’t used to. We have a story of the grandeur of the history of the Kosmos that was unimaginable even a hundred years ago. If that’s not revelation, and if it’s not in some way divine, then I don’t know what is.

From this frame of reference, all my little concerns and neuroses seem absurd. And I suppose they are. But also, pretending like they don’t exist is hiding. And maybe I’m trying to do a little less of a certain kind of that these days.

I mentioned a second story back at the beginning of the email: the story of growing. I’m going to share that with you, too, but this week’s email is about as long as I said my emails would be. So I’ll be back with some thoughts on growing next time.

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I was rocking my daughter back to sleep during one of her night wakes and I thought, “she barely fits in my lap anymore. It won’t be long before she’s too big for this.” I felt some emotions about that, of course. It was a sad and happy, but mostly just beautiful, moment. And it occurred to me, as it so often does in a way that feels characteristically ridiculous, that this little moment also says something bigger about all our moments.

We are constantly growing. I don’t think anything can stop that, because it is the nature of reality to grow and we are part of reality. The only question is, are we also growing the container in which we reside? The size of my lap isn’t growing to match my daughter’s height. But because of that constraint both she and I have an opportunity to find new, generative, beautiful ways of fitting into the world. I’m excited to explore those possibilities with her.

I realize I wrote something back there that might serve as a good starting point for something I’ve been trying to find a definition for lately: life. What is life? How about the container in which I reside? Of course, that just kicks the can down the road to the next question, which is who am I? But that doesn’t seem so hard, right? he asks in both total seriousness and with his tongue stuffed so far into his cheek it’s a miracle he can still type these words.

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I’m writing this email (or at least this sentence of this email) from the hospital, awaiting my son’s birth. It got me thinking about what it would take for me to miss sending you an email. (And, what you might think if you missed receiving an email from me.)

Over the past nine or ten months I’ve been learning about the power of my word. About how my relationship to keeping and giving my word to a very large extent defines my life. How when I don’t keep my word I am allowing myself to be at the mercy of what happens, as opposed to being the captain of my own ship, so to speak. How when I refrain from giving my word in ambitious ways I keep myself safe and small.