STAYING POROUS

“Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves.”

~ Rainer Maria Rilke

I am jogging in the city on a hot summer day, and my legs are in a rhythm, carrying me without much guidance through small crowds, past roses and bus stops.

I begin to think about my struggle not to give myself away. When growing up, I had to check myself a the door like a coat in order to relate to others. Often, I had to pretend to be less than I was in order to be loved.

For years, I would shelve my light to take care of others. Like a fisherman, I’d drop whatever I was doing to rush to the rescue. For so long, the choice seemed only to stay open and lose myself or to close up and cut others off. But today, while running freely through the streets, close to others but not entangles, I realize I am learning after many attempts that I can stay close and porous, caring and present, without holding anyone’s anxiety and without going underground. At least I can try.

I am dripping and breathing like a small horse. It is clouding over. It begins to rain slightly. I move through the beautiful people and ask for a hot dog with mustard and sauerkraut. As I chew this simple food, rain from the sky meets rain from my body, and in the rain, seating, the tang of sauerkraut on my lip, I feel joy. Others shuffle by. Today, there is no room for worthlessness.

~ Sit quietly and bring to mind a time when you lost yourself completely in another’s problems.

~ Center yourself and bring to mind a time when you maintained your sense of self, but cut off another completely to do so.

~ Breathe thoroughly and try to let the two feeling coexist: compassion and sense of self.

~ Inhale. Sense of self. Exhale. Compassion.

~ Inhale. Sense of self. Exhale. Compassion.

The Book of Awakening

~ Mark Nepo