How Things Really Are
Desire is the Root of All Suffering
Here is an ode to the art of letting go.
Non-attachment, as Thich Nhat Hanh, Eckhart Tolle, and the Buddha will all ultimately tell you, is the key to an enlightened life.
Desire is the root of all suffering, and when you release your desires, you cease to be subjected to the suffering of our transient experience on earth as human beings, and allow yourself to be opened to the ultimate nirvana - presence.
Freedom is possible.
My great-great-great-grandmother Jane Stark never found the luxury of enlightenment.
Instead, she found her husband in her sister’s bed and eventually herself on the wrong side of a gun.
I wonder if she knew she had the choice to simply say, “Go on, be well.”
Maybe she considered it, and instead found the best answer in a fight for control of a dying love.
Ride or die.
That ride or die energy is something I’ve felt radiating from my marrow in every relationship I’ve ever had, and it’s always led to more suffering.
“Keep a tight grip.”
How about, let it fucking go!
The opposite of presence. The opposite of release. The opposite of enlightenment.
One winter morning, February 6, 1903, after reconciling over her husband’s torrid affair with her sister, Jane’s husband brought her into the saloon they owned in Haute Terre, Indiana.
He shot her dead, then killed himself.
The pair was discovered in that grisly scene the same morning.
Their four children, Margaret, Florence, John, and Betty Stark were orphaned.
This is the type of thing that transcends generations, that lives in nervous systems.
I know, because I have seen how it’s impacted my grandmother, and my mother.
How it’s impacted me.
Jane’s daughter, Margaret, gave birth to Vera, who gave birth to my grandmother, Dolores.
My grandmother’s father was a cruel man.
She often tells a story of her father wishing her dead as she hid in her parents’ laundry hamper when she was a child.
It broke her heart. It breaks mine.
I know there’s no clear scientific correlation between my grandmother’s grandmother being murdered by her husband.
My grandmother’s cruel father, the petty officer who wished her dead. Her marriage to a misunderstood Vietnam veteran.
My mother’s marriage to another angry man’s angry son.
My own history of angry, misunderstood men: veterans, fishermen, executives.
But lately, I’ve been pondering the thread.
Who can let go? What is it that I feel the need to so tightly grip?
Why does the threat of violence feel so much like home?
How can I choose to make a different decision from my ancestors?
It is painful work. I desire a husband, a companion, a witness to my life, my suffering. Someone who can hold me in my moments of weakness, the way I have held many men. It feels unlikely I might find him. I will not find myself on that cold ground next to a man whose idea of love was darkness.
Ride or die. Yeah, right. What a fucking lie.
Often, I fear the patterns and the hurt I continue to put myself through are woven into my DNA.
Choosing what my ancestors could not choose, ending what they could not end, is painful work.
When I feel off balance or want to grip tightly, I turn to yoga. To be present. To find enlightenment.
Sweat beads down my shoulders, and I watch as it runs over my newly hardened biceps, as I have a hundred other times this year in many moments of absolute personal wreckage.
In Kapalabhati, I exhale as fervently as I can, trying to release another lover’s breath from my lungs, my vision blurring, tears running down my cheeks as I lie on the mat in Shavasana. I feel gratitude to my mother, who, instead of bedtime stories, would read my younger brother and I meditations. She started the work. Maybe I’ll finish it.
Is this another rebirth? Or is this just another dramatic ending to an expectedly ill fated misaligned situationship in which I placed far too much emotional weight?
Ending generational curses is slow, horrid work. Rewiring your brain is painful.
Choosing healthier patterns feels excruciating. Releasing control feels impossible.
But for now, I will at least keep myself off that goddamn saloon floor.
Namaste.
