In the path of totality...

Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional.

This teaching from Buddha changed my life and put me on a healing path after my Dad’s suicide. And, as I was thinking about what to write on this the 18th anniversary of his death, April 27, the day before his 62nd birthday, April 28 – the celebration of his life, I was blindsided by a sudden and devastating death of a young coworker and friend. (That’s his picture of totality above.)

What the fuck do you do with this? Why the fuck? How the fuck? So young. What happened? He didn’t seem that sick. It can’t be. It is. It just is. Pain. I am suffering for him, his family, his wife, my other coworkers, myself.

And then, there’s this word – totality – that has been agitating my brain ever since the solar eclipse a few weeks back when we were all consumed with the “path of totality” – millions packing up their families and their cars with totality as their destination. What a word! Totality! I couldn’t decide if I feared it, or I was seeking it. Whether it is closed and final and finite or the key to transcendence and the eternal. Totality.

What is the lesson to be learned beyond a neat, stellar phenomenon for a couple of minutes? Surely, it’s more than cosmic entertainment, cheap cardboard sunglasses, and a media bonanza!

It wasn’t coming to me though. But, that word – totality - wouldn’t leave me alone.

And then, Andrew died. His photos of totality still in my texts from him. He had flown home to experience the path of totality with his family.

Is death totality? I don’t think so. Or, at least, that’s not what has been bothering me with that word for all these weeks.
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What is totality in life? In the living?

And, while I was running yesterday trying to burn off the overwhelming suffering energy that has had me wrecked since I heard the news of my friend’s death, it suddenly became clear to me again, like it did when Dad died, and I read those words the first time from Buddha.

Totality is just the sun and the moon together.

Both light and shadow.

Source and reflection.

Love and loss.

Joy and sorrow.

Fullness and loneliness.

Presence and absence.

Life and death.

Totality is not a celestial moment that happens once in a generation. It is existence. All of it. In totality.

And, in human existence, pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional.
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Thank you for the light. It will always be part of my darkness.