OleopteneA blog for Mara Collins

thinking about it…

July 25th, 2007

In Western theories, the hope is always that emptiness can be healed, that if the character is developed or the trauma resolved that the background feelings will diminish. If we can make the ego stronger, the expectation is that emptiness will go away. In Buddhism, the approach is reversed. Focus on the emptiness, the dissatisfaction, and the feelings of imperfection, and character will get stronger. Learn how to tolerate nothing and your mind will be at rest.
— Mark Epstein, Going to Pieces Without Falling Apart

The house does feel really empty after the kids are in bed, and I am not finding easy comforts, too late for phone calls to anyone east of here, I am really not hungry, nor interested in television nor reading nor… in any easy numbing of the edge. I think, since my parents’ visit, I’ve been aware that as tough as this year has been for feeling isolated, not having my best friend eight minutes away, nor the casual, easy contact of the same group of mothers whose children started kindergarten when mine did, standing and chatting every day at pick-up time, of just not having the ease with familiarity of old friends. I have to keep working at building our life here, extending myself in small ways, going to parties I might blow off for not knowing enough people, showing up and talking to new people, remembering to smile and make eye contact (but hopefully not in a creepy way, right?) to keep trying new things when my natural inclination is to hide in a book, in a corner. There have been a handful of small victories, and even the most awkward evening out came with compassion for others more socially awkward than me, but the resultant ups and downs are not totally real, and it’s odd tonight o be sort of savoring the emptiness a little, that it’s — safe? I can turn and confront it here. No one is going to save me, after all, this is not about anyone else.

Somehow being alone is precious, and I have been holding it at bay for so long with superficial comforts! and still I will be glad for the company of my husband when he comes home and the way we can be side-by-side doing rather separate things and still be companionable, sharing the things that are interesting to us, but also being completely ok not talking. I think about my father’s state at the airport waiting for my mother’s flight to arrive after they’d been apart five days, how anxious he was to see her. I touch my grandmother’s wedding ring and think of how she never spent a night alone in her own home until the night my grandfather died.

The Epstein book has me thinking about non-materialistic acquisitiveness. I suspect it’s creeping back into the music lessons, my hopes for the kids’ educations, generally, the trying to read more books at a time than is reasonable, even the craving for connection and the good writing experiences where words just pour out, showing relationships between ideas, and the epiphanies are tangible. I suspect that acquisitiveness corrupts or perverts even these things that are good in themselves, and I have to face their absence to let my life be whole. Tonight’s emptiness is a gentle one, in a small enough dose not to be accompanied by vertigo or nausea, using a dental mirror on my imperfections rather than dressing room full-length mirrors under fluorescent lighting. And with that, I am going to go to bed, and wake up well rested so I can be patient with the little darlings.

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