I think I felt a need to engage with my own loneliness. It is impossible to be honest with others, or yourself, until you can develop comfort with solitude.
I’ve been reading Pema Chodron today as well. She says that in the Tibetan tradition the spiritual path begins with hopelessness. I really like this. She suggests “Abandon all hope” as a useful motto. I’m going to put it on my wall.
Here is the thing: we look for comfort in the world, and fear we may not find it. We look for the good, but fear the bad. We hope for what may be, but fear what may not.
Abandoning that hope clears the space for genuine new growth, for opportunity.
For both of these women early grief clearly played a role in their quests. I could feel the pain in Dekker about her parents divorce, and Davidson lost her mother to suicide, and her dog to circumstances.
Here is my question: what was the value of these losses? Is it good that their grief led them to do extraordinary things? Clearly, both seem to have found some solace, some reconciliation.
What is the value in being broken? Should we all wish to remain pristine? How do we best embrace what wounds us, makes us bleed, rips us into pieces?
These are rambles as I try to sort out my own feelings, my own thoughts, my own Lebensgestaltung.