Color, Contrast, and the Space Between
accepting suffering as part of what it means to be Human
Take a moment to contemplate this question:
If you could take away the suffering of the world, would you?
*pause, think, feel, and then continue*
Several days ago, I was talking to myself on my drive (you do this too, right?). I was asking myself this:
If I could heal the world and remove all evil, pain, struggle, or darkness… would I?
The answer - as I was externally processing - was “no”. And it surprised me. “If I love people so much, why would I not want to take away their pain?”
My #1 superpower is that I wholly and truly love people.
I love our humanity.
I love our flaws.
I love our quirks.
I love everything that makes humans uniquely weird and awkward and silly.
I love what it means to be human.
And part of what allows our humanity to exist is contrast. In the struggle to simply BE, we are made beautiful. Our striving creates contrast. Anyone who has ever climbed a tall mountain or suffered an endurance sport knows this: through immense suffering, the reward is made that much sweeter. Once you reach the peak of that 14er or the finish line of that ultramarathon… once the end has been achieved… you become elated, sometimes to the point of literal tears. “I made it.”
Looking across that snow-speckled vista of wilderness, you see that the struggle was worth it all along. Every burning muscle and stomach cramp… it was all worth it for the reward of overcoming.
It’s cliche, I know, but the beauty of life IS the contrast. Without the deep and ominous blues or blacks or greys, you could never appreciate the buoyancy of soft yellows and pinks and empty space.
Without the struggle, you’d never appreciate the reward.
For the last year I’ve been living with my parents in my childhood home in Colorado Springs. The decision came slowly and then all at once, when I started to realize I was drowning in debt.
Over the past few years, I have made good money as a professional psychedelic trip sitter, transformational coach, and teacher. Yet prior years of mismanaging my money and chasing a life of spiritual materialism led me to the point where I couldn’t consistently pay my bills or my rent… eventually bringing me back home to Colorado in order to stabilize, rest, and recoup. (Good thing I’m not a money coach, eh?) Bwahahahah.
It’s been a blessing in many ways: I’ve healed my relationship with my father (a testament to the shadow work and healing that I do my best to embody every day). I have been shocked in the best way to realize that when we heal ourselves, we really do heal the world. So much healing has taken place, in fact, that just the other day, as I was crying about yet another financial setback, my father sat next to me on my bed and just… listened, offering nothing but his presence and his support. He told me how proud of me he was, and how he sees how hard I’m working, how much I support and care for others, and how ruthless and relentless I have been in paying off my debt and getting back on my feet.
Even now, as I’m writing this, my heart is welling with love and my eyes fill with tears of gratitude for the opportunity to restore my family back to relational health, especially with my dad.
And… I’m not going to lie: it sucks living here. My quiet, introverted, sensitive Self desires silence and stillness and peace and quiet and the ability to make my coffee in the morning without having to talk to anyone (my father is an early morning chatty Kathy). And I deeply desire for my own Sanctuary to come home to after three weeks of retreats and living on the road. And yet, that reality seems so far away (still). Even after a year and a half and tens-of-thousands of debts paid, I don’t know when I’ll be able to afford that dream.
This is the contrast of life.
This is the ugly and the beauty wrapped into one.
The struggle and the triumph. The sadness and joy.
And I am living in the Space Between.
Richard Rudd, author of the Gene Keys, says that the true meaning of “ecstasy” is not bliss and joy… but rather the ability to hold both immense sorrow and profound joy at the same time. The Space Between those two extremes is called “ecstasy”.
I have no interest in cleansing the world of pain. No, rather, I have every interest in helping the world accept all of it, learning to surf the waves with grace, and find meaning in the contrast of suffering and overcoming and then celebrating wildly on the other side.
Do I wish that I could suddenly and with the push of a button transport myself to my Pinterest board idea of the perfect home, dog and husband at my side, friends gathered around eating delicious food? Yea. I definitely do. All the time. The longing for this reality is painful.
And… I know (deeply), that when that day finally comes that I walk across the threshold of my Sanctuary (hopefully with a King at my side), that I will fall to my knees with gratitude for every second of struggle and anxiety and discomfort that I had to endure to get there.
Without the struggle, the reward would lose its meaning completely. Without pain, the world would be only beauty, joy, pleasure, fun… which, believe me, I know how great that sounds. I’d like to visit there sometime, but I don’t think I’d want to live there indefinitely. Because imagine if that’s all there was… all the time. Eventually, life would become monotonous and boring. And eventually, one of us would cause trouble just to shake it up and restore the meaning back to Life.
If you ask me, this IS the meaning of Life: to witness it all, to really look at all of it and take it in. Breathe in every fragrance. See the ugliness. Look at that homeless man. Really look at him. See the pain he is in. Feel it. Then take in the beauty of Spring. Watch the red fox find his way through your neighborhood and revel at the dichotomy of wild nature in a concrete jungle. Take in the laughter of a child. Feel his innocent joy. Let it heal you. Take in the horror of war, earthquakes, destruction. Look at the faces of the displaced. Allow their sorrow and despair to penetrate your cells. Taste every bite of food and be grateful for it. Take a hot shower. Let your gratitude humble you.
When we fully embrace the contrast, we become better stewards of every gift. Every drink of water becomes a blessing.
And when we ignore suffering, or if we focus too much on it, we become either numb or we lean only into nihilism. Stripping us of ourselves.
If you want to live more fully, try to find a way into the Space Between. There, you will understand what it means to be fully human, fully alive. And this comes with a responsibility: to consume mindfully, to make aligned choices, to work hard to heal our relationships with others, with money, with our bodies, and so on. But in order to take responsibility, we must first choose to look, to accept what we see fully, to appreciate the contrast, and to embrace suffering as a necessary aspect of what it means to be fully alive, fully human. And then, we must choose, with conscious awareness, how we wish to support the cause of restoring ourselves back to wholeness and good health.
May we find our way back home.
Blessings.