Why bother? What’s the point of all this?

  

Her shoulders hunched.  Eyes downcast.  Despite being a highly confident professional her dejection rolled off her in waves.  Encrusted with shame she couldn’t make eye contact with me or stop the words that burst out, “What’s the point….?  Why bother….?” 

Every person with a difficult history has said these words at one time or another.  More likely, they’ve said these words many times.  Many times.   Uttered these words way too many times.

When my clients share their misery, their despair with me, I remember. I know that place and the words that go with despair.   I’ve certainly said those words, wondered that very thing.

Recently I heard myself saying them again as I grieved the loss of an old, beloved friend.  Face to face with my loss I confronted those words which have been echoed by all my clients, all those I know, and probably you as well.

What’s the point of all this?  Why are we here?  What’s all this suffering about?  How do I bear it? 

I am no philosopher so I have no answer to these existential questions.  Instead I turn toward Rilke who orients us in Letters to a Young Poet:

“Be patient towards all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue.  Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them.  And the point is to live everything.  Live the questions now.  Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.”

How is it possible to live everything as Rilke suggests?  How do we live the questions when our bodies are on fire and our hearts feel empty, discarded, thrown away? 

What to do with loss?  The loss of our lives, our friends, our loved ones, our pets, relationships, identities, sense of self, careers.  All those many ways we define ourselves.

Yes, we all know what it’s like.  We’ve all lost something, someone.  You might even have felt the torture of having something important wretched away from it.

It’s impossible to be alive without losing, without grieving, without pain, distress.   It’s at those moments we all hear or feel those words “What’s the point of all this?”

When we’re suffering and asking existential questions we’re looking for something to hold us, contain us, or as Rilke says, how do we learn to love the question and live inside it?

As I write this I am remembering going to a workshop in the late 80’s that Stephen and Ondrea Levine were doing in D.C.  The workshop itself was on compassion.  As wonderful as the workshop was, its content has been washed away in my memory, leaving behind the imprint of what unfolded inside me after I left.  I was living at Kripalu back then in the 80’s which gave ample time for the compassion inquiry to gestate inside me on the long drive home.

The question rattled around in my heart: Can I give myself compassion? 

Driving the 95 corridor from DC to New England is never easy.  Definitely not easy with a profound inquiry going on:  Compassion?  I didn’t have a clue.  Sitting with the question, living that question cracked open a well unknown inside me.  What is compassion?  Can I give myself compassion?

The tears flowed in a torrential as I pulled to the side of the 95 highway.  I wept uncontrollably.

I realized I had no idea what compassion was.  And, I certainly had no idea how to give myself compassion. 

I faced how critical I was to myself, how hard I was on myself, how much I judged myself for every little thing.  Grappling with the question opened up the inquiry in my heart. It’s become a guiding question as I struggled to learn how to live inside the question, turning it over, letting my heart wrestle in the absolute unknowing of how to respond.

Learning to warm your heart with compassion.  Filling up with the waters of kindness.

Over the years I have done many practices from many traditions to explore this profound inquiry.   Those practices have showed me a way of being with myself that I didn’t know was possible.  Today I have a deeper awareness of the question.  Perhaps more importantly, I now, gratefully, have a set of practices to turn to, ones I use every day.

The question of how to be compassionate with myself led me to get trained by Chris Germer and Kristin Neff to teach Mindful Self-Compassion.

Their empirically based practices have provided the frame to hold this important inquiry for me, and for thousands of others around the world.  Chris and Kristen have taken the question and introduced practices to work with the painful suffering we all encounter.

Check with yourself. 

How self-compassionate are you to yourself?

What do you do when your critical parts take over, beating you up, leaving you wretched?

Do you have practices to help you soften and be with the suffering you are in?

Mindful Self-Compassion 9 session course starts October 9th