Go, said the bird, for the leaves were full of children,
Hidden excitedly, containing laughter.
Go, go, go, said the bird: human kind
Cannot bear very much reality.
Time past and time future
What might have been and what has been
Point to one end, which is always present.
from Four Quartets, by TS Eliot
Yesterday, I started singing a familiar tune with my own words. “Hello Suffering, my old friend. I’ve come to walk with you again.” My apologies if you have the old Simon and Garfunkel song stuck in your head for the rest of this day. For me, it all began with the longing for life to be different, for the “what is now” of time to be “what could’ve been,” and also “what should be different”.
Isn’t that how it goes? Suffering, after all, is said to be an inevitable part of life. I’m thinking of emotional suffering, but doesn’t physical suffering also come inevitably?
I’ve often thought about the “second arrow” stance on suffering. Shot by a first arrow, the human experiences pain. Focusing on how the arrow is undeserved or how easy life was before the arrow or all the other thought loops about the first arrow becomes the second arrow. This second arrow is the one the human shoots into themself. Apparently, we have some choice around shooting that arrow.
Maybe both understandings of suffering have some truth in them. The inevitability of it, and the choice around it. That song wasn’t the only familiar tune I was singing. So, in fact, was the suffering. The initial longing took me into a thought loop of all the many things I wish were different, all the things I fear will never be.
Time is a funny thing, though, and there is a third truth, too—that suffering can teach me hope for the future.
Yesterday, I consciously pressed pause on both the song and the thought loop. The truth in that moment was this suffering stemmed not only from longing, but also from worry and sadness. Worry and sadness for my teenager, and for myself.
Pressing pause, I took a thought detour, a different trail in my mind. What can I learn from the past? I recalled beautiful moments with my teen, moments of connection and joy. Suddenly, it wasn’t only a mental experience. I could feel the memories relaxing my body, settling my nervous system.
And then, I could make the transition to hope for the future, to imagining the beauty to come. Imagining the story I couldn’t see, yet could trust in its potential.
I looked around me, then, at the rose blooms moving past their peak, tomatoes nearly finished, leaves falling from my weeping cherry tree. So much of this season’s beauty has begun to fade and die. Yet, I know how this works. The both, and of time reminds me. What is now holds a precious memory of the yesterday I beheld as lovely. What will come is born from that which I can not see. I can trust and hope in this.