«There is no life without heaviness and dirt»

Ann Lamotte is our contemporary, American writer, granddaughter of Christian missionaries. She does not have a university degree, but she has a lot of life experience and a sense of humor. She writes about forgiveness, about betrayal, about family. About how she survived the death of her dog, and how she was looking for a life partner on a dating site. Again, it’s about forgiveness.

About herself, she says this: «I am Annie: beautiful, destroyed, touching, dark, loving — and to some extent crazy.» She is 67 years old. She learned to overcome despair without losing realism. Perhaps her observations will help some of us.

«Welcome»

At the age of sixty, I finally realized that I had not been taught to say “welcome” as a child, and began to think about how the absence of this habit reinforced my sense of alienation.

Let go of unfulfilled hopes

There is no life without heaviness and dirt. Most of them try their best, and some things work out; and we want to get rid of what doesn’t and never will. All that we lose is just a thing that does not need to cling to a stranglehold. It was gone. We can mourn her, but we don’t have to go to the grave with her.

Deal with sadness

When all seems to be lost, a couple of friends, a beautiful view and rare desperate moments of grace come in handy. I don’t know of anything more effective.

Two Gifts of Sorrow

It is not uncommon to avoid pain by trying to «treat» others; shopping helps a little, as does romantic obsession. The ultimate option is martyrdom. Many people benefit from an excess of physical activity, but this is not for me. Although I have found that a stack of magazines can dull your senses and even help change your mood.

The bad thing is that whatever means you use to keep the pain in check deprives you of the grains of gold that gives you the feeling of sorrow. Concentration is a great help to maintain certainty and gives the illusion that your life has not fallen apart. But since life has really fallen apart and the illusion will not last forever, you — as a person of luck and courage — will want to endure the collapse of the illusion.

You start crying, squirming, screaming, then you keep crying; but sorrow eventually comes to an end, giving you two of its best gifts: gentleness and enlightenment.

What does «not forgive» look like?

Not forgiving is like drinking rat poison yourself, and then waiting for the rat to die… Lack of forgiveness is like leprosy: if left untreated, it can take away inner balance, soul, and a sense of one’s own «I».

Good intentions

There is one little problem with good intentions: there are always uninvited voices that complain, gossip, pester and haunt. Always. A grain — a motive — can be wonderful: all compassion and disinterestedness, a desire to serve, to be useful; but there is also the rest of the rubbish that goes «into the load.» Because of all this, it takes a lot more energy and detours to get anywhere.

Seeking Solace

When you are in darkness, you have to try to remember that we live in a dance: darkness, light, darkness, light, twilight … Or when you are in the sun, but clouds are gathering, you immediately think: oh my god, now it will be cold and wet, and it all went to hell.

And then you might remember that last time the darkness was deepening, your friends sent little thin beams of light into it — and you remember one thing that kind of helped, and one more step that you can take, and maybe something else to try.

To make food taste good

Nothing tastes good if you eat with bated breath. For food to be tasty, you need to be present in the moment, savor it, and presence lies in attention and in the flow of breath. It begins in the mouth, the parent’s favorite organ of comfort, then connects the head to the body through the throat, continuing into the lungs and abdomen, a wonderful connecting string of air.

find yourself

Pain and failures raised me, helped me recover — and, finally, find my true self. I had to figure out that life wouldn’t be satisfying if I tried to crunch into someone else’s idea of ​​myself, namely the idea of ​​someone sophisticated enough to prefer dark chocolate. I love milk chocolate — so sue me.

The void can only be filled with love

All I wanted since I arrived here on earth was the same things I needed as a baby: from cold to warmth, from loneliness to embrace, from vessel to giver, from emptiness to fullness. . You can change the world with a hot bath if you dive into it from the position of understanding that you are worth every care, even when you are dirty and scared.

Everything I wanted

I learned from my teachers that when you want to overeat, or this man, or expensive purchases, this emptiness can only be filled with love: napping in an embrace with dogs, thinking about nothing, or singing past the notes in your church.

Get rid of the pain

It’s terrible, but when you want to get rid of pain, you need to tune in to it — and connect to it directly. To find out how many toxins you have.

Don’t get stuck in your own right

People like to say, «Forgiveness starts with forgiving yourself.» How cute! Thank you for informing. Yes — not so. Forgiveness certainly doesn’t start with logical reasoning.

The rational insists that we are right, seeks to attack and defend. And that means there will be no peace. It loves a bedtime story — about how we were offended. Rational is claustrophobic, so the choice is whether you want to be stuck in your rightness but not free, or whether you want to admit that you are a little lost and become available for a long, deep breath — as great as the universe.

Forgiveness

Forgiveness does not necessarily mean that you want to dine with the forgiven. Just trying to unfasten the tight Velcro. Lewis Smidis put it like no other: “To forgive is to set the prisoner free—and to discover that the prisoner was yourself.”

It is a pity that there are no shortcuts: in order to heal a wound, you need to expose it. Forgiveness means you no longer want to hit back. You don’t have to take vacations together, but by continuing to return evil for evil, you remain trapped in a nightmare.

Skiing

I only started riding six years ago and I still have problems with balance and control. I fall, sometimes I can’t get up, but I like what happens between falls, humiliation and craven despair. In a word, everything is like in real life.

Source: from Anne LaMott’s Small Wins (Eksmo, 2016).