“Everything changed the day I became a mother.”
“Everything changed the day I learned I had cancer.”
“Everything changed the day my house burned down.”
“Everything changed the day I didn’t have anything to eat.”
“Everything changed the day my daughter died.”
“Everything changed the day my spouse told me he wanted a divorce.”
What's a moment or day when "everything" really changed for you? Can you see what I’m driving at? After days such as these, we see the whole universe differently. Oh, I know, some old behaviors may creep back in months later, when these events begin to merge with the past, yet... late at night, on the long drive home, you turn the radio off and your mind wanders back to times before The Big Apprehending Moment. You have to admit: yeah, I really am different. And I may be sadder but I'm definitely wiser, and I wish I could impart it to someone I love who’s stuck.
Or maybe I go back to a high school reunion, and some of my old classmates seem exactly the same, still worried about the things I worried about when I was in high school, and it hits me: hmmm, I really seem to be substantively different, don't I?
What’s happened? I have “apprehended” something. I have learned something, not just in my mind, but also in my heart and in my will. It’s not about some little one‑liner that makes for a cute quote; I am slightly “tilted,” down to my core; my basic angle of vision has been altered.
Nobody goes looking for such shifts. But if they occur, it is almost impossible to run from them or pretend they didn’t happen. Their lessons are the deepest ones we learn. No hiding place works. It is actually damaging to try to suppress them.
And my inner world doesn’t cave in (as I fear it will) when I let such a giant move in.
You know quite well, deep within you,
that there is only a single Magic,
a single power, a single salvation
... and that It is called loving.
Well, then, love your suffering.
Do not resist it, do not flee from it.
It is our aversion that hurts, nothing else.
Hermann Hesse
Siddhartha
