“Joy is the experience of possibility,” he wrote, “the consciousness of one’s freedom as one confronts one’s destiny. In this sense despair . . . can lead to joy. After despair, the one thing left is possibility.”
The door
Everything in front of us is defined by possibility. We are never inside the future. We are outside the door. We have our hand on the handle. We are turning the handle. But we never know what is on the other side of the door. It may be a room similar to the one we are standing in, or it might be a room we have never seen before. It might not be a room at all. It might be an orchard bearing all the ripe fruits of our labor. It might be wasteland. But we can never be sure. And even if we end up somewhere we don’t want to be, we can be thankful for the knowledge that another door exists. And another beautiful handle, waiting to be turned.
The messy miracle of being here
The Western idea of self-empowerment requires you to become better, discover your inner billionaire, get beach-bodied, work, upgrade. It says the present is not enough. It’s self-loathing masquerading as salvation.
We need self-acceptance. Self-compassion. Our present bodies and minds and lives are not things we have to escape. We need to remember the messy miracle of being here.
Acceptance
There comes a beautiful point where you have to stop trying to escape yourself or improve yourself and just allow yourself.
Basic nowness
In Buddhism there is the concept of mettā, or maitrī, meaning benevolence or “loving-kindness.” Mettā is about accepting yourself as you are. There is no intent to change you, but rather an acceptance of yourself and all things as change.
As Pema Chödrön explains in When Things Fall Apart, what makes this concept radical is that there is no attempt to become a better person. It is about “giving up control altogether and letting concepts and ideals fall apart. This starts with realizing that whatever occurs is neither the beginning nor the end.” Once that happens, you can see that whatever you are feeling is within the normal human range and has been felt by humans since the beginning of our history. “Thoughts, emotions, moods, and memories come and they go, and basic nowness is always here.”
The concept of mettā goes beyond self-compassion, though. In a mettā meditation the aim is to extend compassion first to yourself, then to family and friends, and then beyond that to all beings. Even the difficult ones who annoy us or make us angry. Often this is done via a mantra that begins by focusing on ourselves then moves on to focusing on all of life, spreading out in widening concentric circles of compassion like ripples in a pond.
May I be safe and live happily . . . May she be safe and live happily . . . May they be safe and live happily . . . May all living beings be safe and live happily.
It’s beautiful. The idea is that extending compassion to all things helps us to connect to the unity of life. We feel the world’s suffering but experience too the joy of life and all nature. We become a part of all things through compassion. We become the metaphorical fire, earth, air, and water. We become what we always were. Life itself.
How to be an ocean
You haven’t failed,
In a moment of sadness.
You haven’t lost,
In a moment of defeat.
You are not a statue
Standing in an eternal contrapposto.
You are a thing in motion:
A rising tide, a cresting wave.
Your vast depths witness
Every marvel, every wonder.
You are, then, marvelous,
And wonderful. So:
Don’t fight the moon.
Allow every tide.
And give all your wrecked ships
The space to hide.
More
In troublesome moments, the beauty of life can come into sharper focus. And the things we learn in the bad days serve us in the good times. Just as the promise of good times helps us through the bad. Everything connects. All life is within us. Fear to calm, hope to hopelessness, despair to comfort. A grain of sand can tell us about a universe. And a single moment can teach us about every other moment. We are never only one thing.
Just as our ancestors saw the world as a composite of earth, fire, water, and air—so we can see in any moment, in any individual, a connection to all the other elements of that existence. We always have the possibility to be more. To be bigger than any current crisis or worry. To discover something new about the landscape of our mind, not by adding to it but by realizing it was there all along. The way a page in a book is there even if we haven’t read it yet.
We always have more inside us than we realize. More strength, more warmth, more compassion, more resilience.
The world can surprise us, sure, but we can surprise ourselves too.
End
Nothing truly ends.
It changes.
Change is eternal. In being change, you too are eternal. You are here. In this moving moment. And in being here, you are also forever.
A fire becomes ash, which becomes earth. Sadness becomes joy, sometimes within the same cry. Birds molt feathers, then grow new ones for winter.
Love becomes grief. Grief becomes memory. Wounds become scars.
Doing becomes being. Pain becomes strength. Noon becomes night.
Rain becomes vapor and then rain again. Hope becomes despair then hope again.
A pear ripens, falls, transforms as it is tasted.
A caterpillar disappears into its silk-wrapped cocoon, and things go dark and then . . .
Acknowledgments
Thanks to my agent Clare Conville and all at C+W. And to my editor Francis Bickmore and all at Canongate including Jamie Byng, Jenny Fry, Lucy Zhou, Alice Shortland, Vicki Watson, Vicki Rutherford, Leila Cruickshank, Megan Reid, Caroline Gorham, Rebecca Bonallie, Jessica Neale, Caroline Clarke, Bethany Ferguson, Rafi Romaya, Jo Lord, Katalina Watt, Steph Scott, and Drew Hunt.
A massive thank-you to all the booksellers for their support over the years, to all the people on social media who have commented on my online ramblings, and to all the readers who have stuck with my writing as I switch back and forth between genres.
And finally, to the wonderful people I live with: Andrea Semple, Pearl Haig, Lucas Haig, and Betsy the dog.
Permission credits
Every effort has been made to trace copyright holders and obtain their permission for the use of copyright material. The publisher apologizes for any errors or omissions and would be grateful if notified of any corrections that should be incorporated in future reprints or editions of this book.