“a state of
being or existence above and beyond the limits of material experience”
Just as
we are all dichotomies, so we all have characteristics that can be viewed as
both our blessing and our curse. One of those characteristics for me is my
ability to feel deeply. My ex-husband would watch on with both frustration and
awe as I covered the spectrum of human emotion in a matter of minutes, and then
with ease, could carry on with the rest of my day. He once said the sky I saw
was much bluer than the one he saw, but that the pain I felt was deeper too.
Living
life that way is a rich experience, and one that can enable a person to not
fear what lay within him or herself. But sometimes when a person is handed too
much over a span of time, he or she shuts down emotionally; a coping mechanism.
At the
time I didn’t realize it, but it happened to me. I handled the experiences
being handed to me with an “evenness” previously unknown to me. And so it was
for several years, and it occurred to me that maybe I had learned transcendence;
the ability to rise above and beyond the limits of material experience.
Then
one night as I sat gazing at the stars, I realized my sense of awe was diminished.
As I thought about many of the events I had faced over the previous few years,
I also recalled that I had never shed any tears. The words to the Eagle’s Desperado played in my head-- “You’re
losing all your highs and lows, aint’ it funny how the feeling goes away--” and I got it; I was numb. While the
absence of the lows was nice, life without the highs is a flat life indeed. With
that recognition, the tough exterior that shielded me for several years began
to soften, and I got hurt. I sat on a friend’s couch sobbing, recalling how
awful it was to feel something so deeply. Later that night, a favorite phrase
from Kahlil Gibran’s The Prophet,
came into my mind:
“The
deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain.”
Gibran’s
poetic wisdom both gave me pause to reconsider the concept of transcendence and
reminded me of the richness that exists in this physical experience we have
chosen. Human emotion is a critical part of that experience. With that
awareness, maybe healthy transcendence is not so much about responding to what
life throws our way by immediately rising above it. Perhaps it is ultimately
about how we respond when we find
ourselves in that deep well of human emotion.
Blessings,
Sheryl
