Tending to Your Interior Life (first written in late fall, 2021)

Have you been tending to your Interior Life? Or have you also been recognizing that the exterior life with its tasks and responsibilities is so consuming that it’s possible to largely ignore the subtleties and complexities of this inner world? Lately I’ve been realizing, yet again, that settling into this vast and deep inner space provides nourishment that feeds the hungry soul. Checking items off a “To Do” list feels satisfying, perhaps because there is a sense of achievement and completion, and there’s never a shortage of things requiring one’s attention.  But wandering around in the watery depths of unconscious motivations, abandoned dreams, profound pain and the joys that are too precious to share (with just anyone) creates an intimacy with self and with LIFE that has the potential to inform and enrich the exterior realms. It also seems obvious that the feelings and experiences that haven’t been adequately processed show up on the surface in distorted ways, muddying the waters of relationships, negatively influencing decisions and causing harm and/or embarrassment. Sigh.

Personally I’ve spent most of this year grieving the loss of my Dad and tending to all of the business that surrounds his passing, including my Mom and her affairs. I often felt grateful for concrete tasks to complete because, in the quiet moments, the chasm of grief felt too scary to drop into, like it would consume me. So I kept myself busy with a smile on my face even as I retreated from most social situations, and drifted in a vague sense of dis-integration. I wasn’t integrated within myself, which certainly contributed to being much less effective in the world. And the lessons return: Go inside. Be with it. There’s nothing to fix; there’s so much to feel. All year I kept thinking, “This is the path we are all walking.”

To realize that every person you meet, or pass by on the street, or remember from long ago, or learn about in a podcast or see in an Insta-G post … to realize that every single person has an interior life is just so tender (to me!) that it’s heart-breaking. I mean, it’s obvious but recently has felt revolutionary. Every person daydreams; has experienced cruelty; has things they’d rather be doing and words they wish they could express; has unresolved matters, regrets, secret delights and hopes for the well-being and success of those they love. We’ve all experienced profound loss and all have had our hearts broken. When we meet on the surface without investing time feeling, processing, digesting and integrating the experiences of our lives our demands of one another become unreasonable, our judgements unkind, and our metrics of success distorted. When we open up to the depths within, I believe it makes us more naturally empathetic toward our fellow travelers and much more gentle in the world. That feels like a place each of us can call home!