It’s National Coming Out Day, and if you’re part of that you have my heartfelt admiration and applause. I’ve done it already (not that we don’t have to keep doing it), but it was so long ago that it doesn’t cross my mind the way it once did. Seems to be less of an issue in the happy circles in which I travel now, though I’m aware it’s worse in other places. (We see you, Florida, and we are still capital G-A-Y.) That said, I’m not feeling very much like fighting back today. Let the young people take the torch and fly, my pretties, fly.
No, I’m feeling a little down thanks to a recent trip excavating photos from the past year for our year-end photo books. Collecting them in one place and seeing the past year unfold again, all that we knew was coming, and all that we didn’t know – it left me with the sadness and ache that losing a loved one leaves in their wake.
And then there’s the news: our own political turmoil, and the burgeoning war in the Middle East. So much wickedness, so much madness, so much blame and death – and it makes our petty problems feel even more petty. It’s an icky place to be, an icky thing to feel.
I move to my meditation space, lowering myself to the ground, feeling the floor beneath me, seeking something solid, something to hold onto or sink into, and there I begin the deep breathing. It takes me through the next twenty minutes, lightening the worry, expanding the plain of peace – that empty place where, if I concentrate and focus and inhabit only this moment of breathing, the emptiness becomes a relief. It helps. It helps a little. I will not ask for more.
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