The wound is the place the light enters you. (Rumi)
There’s no question in my mind what my essential wound is. It’s my sometimes-unbearable sensitivity to the passage of time, the immense difficulty I have accepting life’s basic impermanence. This manifests in a thousand ways big and small, which I’ve documented in excruciating detail here on this blog.
It occured to me as I rolled Rumi’s words over and over in my head that maybe my wound is especially deep, particularly gapingly open: it lets so much light in that sometimes I have to shield my eyes. The light floods in, bringing with it drawn-breath moments of astonishment and innumerable gifts, but also a stinging in my eyes and, often, tears.
I’ve contemplated before the idea – and by “contemplated” I mean dreamed, imagined, and ferociously wished – that this sensitivity could somehow be, someday, a source of strength, courage, wisdom. Even more importantly, I continue searching for a way that this strand of my personality, which manifests mostly as a seam of sometimes shiny sorrow, could be a positive lesson and inheritance for my children. Both of them already evince qualities that I know come from the same deep well of acute sensitivity that exists inside me. I’m desperate to find a light in which this heritage isn’t just a suffocatingly heavy blanket of melancholy draped over their experience.
Both Grace and Whit are keenly aware of the world around them. One of my traditions with them is going for “notice things” walks (sometimes, for extra fun, in our pajamas) during which I celebrate the things that they observe. Always, without fail, they see something that I would have missed: a heart-shaped engraving on a tree trunk, the way the light hits a particular bush, a darting sparrow in a tree, the trail of white in the sky left by an airplane slicing through the gloaming.
Perhaps this is just the light entering them. They definitely share my wound, but maybe they also share my propensity towards wonder. Maybe this makes up for the pain. I fiercely hope so.
Thank you for sharing, Lindsey. I’m sensitive, too, which has often led to embarrassing public crying and continues to baffle my laid-back in-laws. I remember one time, at a family reunion, they played Michael Jackson classics the entire trip. I hadn’t really listened to much of his music but I was stung by his words. As my husband, his parents and his sisters sang joyfully along to the music, I found myself getting choked up over and over again, completely unable to keep it together. They thought I was nuts. I did too.
I love that you go on “notice things” walks with your children. I may have to steal that idea. 🙂
Have you ever read Mister God, This is Anna by Fynn? It’s a true story of an angel child particularly good at noticing the beauty others pass by.
thank you for this, lindsey. feeling raw emotions from deep wounds, the intensity and tenderness. and trying to trust the light that is shining through the brokenness.
I think the wonder goes a long way toward making up for the pain. And I think this sensitivity is a kind of strength – it takes courage to really notice the passage of time, and to live deeply in the ordinary moments.
Am stealing your “noticing things” walks. Really lovely photo.
seam of sometimes shiny sorrow – how beautiful is that line???
I think you sensitivity to time is your strength. It informs your gorgeous writing and makes you so very present.
Your deep feelings, coupled with your ability to articulate and your willingness to share is a rare gift. In our over informed, over stimulated busy world, the one who can still feel is, if not an example, an opening for those around you to feel. It is like an invitation, “Come. Put your heart right here. Open it. Know the beauty of the world with me.”
Thank you.
Oh yea, defiinitely stealing the notice things idea. Maybe tonight.
I hope so too. I really do.
My oldest is a sensitive soul. I can already see the ways in which this will be his burden. But I think it will be his gift too – that with the propensity for feeling lower lows comes the ability to feel higher highs.
I’m just so glad the three of you have each other, and that we all have the light entering us. I agree – that is what makes life good. The noticing, the wondering…
Thank you.
XOXO
I so dearly remember the evening walks of wonderment around the block when my boys were little… finding sticks, checking on the neighbors goldfish, jumping to try and touch the moon…
And yet the struggle with time, I believe, also keys back to the developmental period before we had any true sense of time (before we could form sequential memories). Thus these experiences were timeless—timelessly lovely when good, and an eternal hell when frightened, lonely or overwhelmed. Thus when we get triggered to the unremembered past, we also yearn for some stoppage of time when things are dear in the here and now. My experience is that of trusting Rumi, trusting that the pain is indeed light-bringing… for when we truly allow the pain to pierce us and stop all our wriggling, and obsessing we are spilled into something softer, surrendering to the truth which is that we cannot avert the past, which is the secret of our suffering… that we project it into the future (that time our kids will be grown and we will be alone again, or old, or facing death) and hope to somehow avoid what has, in fact, already occurred (at least from an emotional standpoint).
Here’s to being connected in wonder AND in pain.