I am sitting here listening to a seminar on 'End of Life'. Ha.
The cats are fighting under my chair. They want me to wiggle the toy.
I feel low. Cold. Alone. There is absence downstairs.
I love these cats. They are like fairies: irresponsible, uncontrollable, somehow outside the moral sphere.
The dog was not a fairy. He was different. I expected things of him. That I could ask him to 'Leave' or 'Stop' or 'Come' or 'Go on'. He was also more impactful - that he needed me to take him out. That he could direct proceedings. Even more than the cats wanting me to wiggle the toy.
So I was meditating and the guide said to consider a painful feeling. That wasn't hard. But what was the feeling?
This is where it gets strange. It was not a feeling. Well, it was a physical feeling.... or a load of physical feelings - chest tight, stomach nauseous, head fuzzy, tiredness, coldness.
As for the emotion.... guilt, emptiness, loss, confusion... not actually grief... grief is like the sum of all this mixture. But the mixture is muddy... none of the constituent colours can really be seen clearly as themselves, they are too mixed up.
And what of love? Another muddle of irritation and reliance and affection and intimacy and responsibility and concern and frustration. It's not a thing.
Love, like grief, is a stew. With a load of different ingredients. And some ingredients that don't seem to align with what you think of when you think of pure grief or pure love.
It depends on who the feeling is for. On the complexities of the relationship.
How can I say I love or I grieve when there is no one thing that is love or is grief?
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