A stone’s throw from disaster

Loss and change are things I think about a lot, even at the best of times. 

Usually in a pretty selfish way.

I started this newsletter six years ago, in part to help make sense of some significant loss and change in my own life. I was convinced I had ruined my life forever, and I couldn’t seem to shake this feeling, even once things started looking up again.

But the truth was, that wasn’t the first time I’d become convinced my life was ruined, and it wouldn’t be the last. For much of my life, I’ve had a tendency to assume I’m only ever a stone’s throw from disaster.

Back then I wrote this piece, which to this day is still the main way people find this little club for big feelings - googling some variation on “have I ruined my life”.

I’m not alone in this tendency to assume the worst, it seems?

Sensitivity to change

I sometimes wonder if part of the deal of being ‘the sensitive type’ is you are simply more attuned to loss and potential loss. That what we’re sensitive to, more specifically, is not just life’s challenges but its changes.

Whether it’s a hyper-awareness of all the things that could go wrong, or a conviction deep in your bones that the worst has already happened - that no matter how your life looks on paper at any given moment, in truth you’ve taken a drastically wrong turn somewhere in ways you can’t fully even quite explain.

Speak for yourself. I don’t know what you’re talking about…

A focus on myself

In my experience at least, this sensitivity to loss and change tends to be pretty exclusively focused on myself - what has or could go wrong in my life, specifically.

I’ve had my share of tough things happen to me, it’s not all been in my head.

But still I’ve often wondered why I’m so sensitive, so affected by things that others seem to sail through with less angst and despair.

I have thought to myself more than once, and not without good reason: ‘there are people out there with real problems you know, like actual life-or-death health issues, why can’t you just enjoy your life?’

Then suddenly, real life disaster

Two weeks ago, not one but two people I love found out about life-altering health crises. On the same day.

We’re just a couple of weeks into this very new world, so we’re still mapping the terrain.

So far it’s a world of sleepless nights, health admin, group planning sessions, and big ‘what does it all mean’ life chats.

Forgive my vagueness here. There’s only so much I feel comfortable writing about this at the moment, since much of it is not my story to tell, or since it’s happening to some and all of us at the same time in different measures, so the story doesn’t belong to me. 

But there is something I’ve been reflecting on that I thought might be useful to share with the club. It’s less about the particulars of the crisis itself, and more about what we find we each have to draw on when life gets really challenging.

Two things happened for me when this actual life-or-death crisis hit the people I love.

1) Instant perspective.

On all the not-life-or-death things that felt life-or-death right up until they now suddenly don’t.

My girlfriend Honor quoted Sam Harris to me the other day, not long after we found out the news. Speaking about how to foster a sense of gratitude for your life as it currently is, he says something like:

At any given moment, you could be about to receive a piece of news that completely upends your life. Upon hearing that news, you’d do absolutely anything in your power to get back to the life you are living right now, even with all its many faults and challenges. 

This kind of a crisis, it clears the decks. It focuses the mind on what and who matters most.

That much is to be expected, I guess.

But I’ve found another lesson here too, in these early days of what’s unfolding. One that’s a little more unexpected…

2) I’ve started to notice a few things I’ve learned by being so sensitive to loss and change. 

Things that so far have been at least a little bit useful to those around me, as we collectively adjust to our new normal.

Wanting to be useful

We’ve all spent the past two weeks doing our best to be useful, in the small ways we can be. For me, that’s been things like babysitting, delivering food, and offering a kind ear to whoever needs it. 

I often get told I’m a calm presence in a crisis - which always gives me a wry smile, because so often I am anything but calm under this exterior. And yet, there’s truth in it too. When you feel sad or scared a bunch of the time, you do learn a few things about how to sit with radical uncertainty.

At one of our emergency meetings last week, I made a simple offer to start: a guided meditation. Before we dived into the many decisions that needed to be made, I had us simply feel into our bodies and breathe together. 

I felt awkward making the offer at first. There were objectively more pressing things to attend to (and lots of them). But it gave us a much-needed chance to breathe out together. Space for a few tears to flow. Space for us all not to know exactly what to do just yet.

As someone said afterwards in the silence that followed, ‘alright, Graham’s in charge of slowing us down.’

I remember thinking, ‘okay good, that much I’ve got some experience in.’

Honor’s been noticing something similar. Her sister last week called her her ‘calm Buddha guru’. 

Honor and I have talked this past week about how, even though a health crisis is not at all the same thing as a mental health crisis, there are ways in which we’re both drawing on what we’ve learned from our own struggles, as well as what we’ve learned from supporting each other over the years.

Who’d have thought?

Becoming soft enough

I wonder how much of ‘I have ruined my life’ boils down to: ‘I’m no use to anyone, and never will be.’

That was how I felt when I was sure I’d ruined my life six years ago. It’s the story we tell ourselves when we’re suffering - perhaps especially when we suffer for no ‘obvious’ reason. That we must be just not built for this world. That we’re too focused on ourselves. That we’re too soft to make it.

But this past two weeks has me considering a different view.

What if all that sensitivity was just making us soft enough, to be the soft landing spot for the people we love when they really need it?

What if in those dark times, our only real job is to work out how to survive, because eventually, what we learn in that process will have value not only for ourselves but for other humans doing it tough?

Because here’s what we can’t truly know until many years down the track. The more we live through, the more useful we become. 

I found a book on my shelf last week, the day after hearing the scary news. I didn’t buy this book, I have literally no idea how it arrived on my bookshelf, dog-eared and already underlined. But it was a good book to find right now.

It’s named, in that grandiosely ominous style only self-help books can get away with, Letting Go Of The Person You Used To Be. 

The author, Lama Surya Das, writes:

“We cry because of our losses; we despair and become depressed because of our losses; we lose hope because of our losses. We are haunted by our losses and we often define ourselves by our losses. But, and this is an important but, we are also strengthened by our losses. We can change and mature spiritually because of our losses. Almost by definition, loss is transformative.”

Of course, try telling that to your younger self. It’s not exactly comforting. But maybe it’s one of those things that only really means anything once you’ve lived it? 

Our own tough times, whether they stem from life events out of our control, or whether they feel entirely more self-inflicted, they change us. They can make us more useful to others going through their own big stuff. Even the really big stuff, that we can’t hope to fix or even truly understand.

My own struggles haven’t prepared me for everything our little family is going through right now, not by any stretch. But they’ve prepared me to feel completely unprepared, and still stay as present as I can. And that’s a useful trait.

I can’t take the suffering away from the people I love. Truly, I can’t even really know what they’re going through right now, facing some of the hardest things life can throw at a person. But I can keep showing up as best I can, with these few things I’ve learned on my own path. I can keep helping in the practical ways. And I can bring my sensitivity to the table, too, for what that’s worth.

When life gets weird, there's always wattle...

Life is such a fragile thing isn’t it? And yet it’s also everything we’ve got.

I said above that disaster focuses the mind, but that’s not strictly speaking true. The mind can be scattered to the high winds by life’s biggest stuff. The lack of sleep. The racing anxious thoughts. 

Maybe what I mean is that big scary things have a way of focusing the heart. 

Not just on your own family, but on the wider family. On anyone who’s been touched by big scary things.

This past week or so, I find myself noticing other people more, on my walks, out driving - wondering what their stories might be, what they might be struggling with in themselves or in their own families.

On today’s walk the wattle is putting on an absolute show in the winter sunshine. There’s a class of kids on a field trip down by the creek, all wearing high viz vests so from a distance they look like the world’s smallest (and most enthusiastic) construction crew.

Life is so fragile, but it’s all we have. At least we’re in it together.

That’s all for now. If you have thoughts you'd like to share after reading this issue, you can let me know with the button below.

Talk soon.

Graham

xx