Not traveling alone

I think that through much of life, many of us make the mistake of thinking we are traveling alone. I don't necessarily mean this in a negative "I'm looking out for Number One" sort of way, but more as a general observation: we forget that our lives are so intricately linked with those around us, and spend so much time staring at our own feet that we fail to see how many other feet are traveling the same path.

I have mentioned the Buddhist practice of Tonglen on this site before, but over the last few days I have come to realize how healing it can be, when under stress, to think of others suffering as you do, and to reach in to your own healthy spaces and pour a little of that out to share. I can't claim that practice has become automatic for me, but I will say that it's become one of the tricks in the self-help drawer in my brain; one of the places I can go when under stress.

And though I understand that the function of Tonglen is to remind us of others' suffering when we risk becoming too caught up in our own, in practice what I find is that it reminds me of the "minitude" (as opposed to magnitude) of my own suffering in comparison to the many blessings in my life.

I don't seem to have much energy left to explore this at the moment, but I do want to dedicate this column to Eileen and to Clara, the two women who shared my hospital room these last 3 days. Because of them, I never felt alone, and I wish them both a speedy and comfortable recovery from their surgeries, both of which are to repair damage suffered in falls.

However empty the way before us may look, the fact is that none of us is really traveling alone.