27. Sorrow
Day and night, as we broadcast TV and radio programs into our homes, we’re also beaming them into outer space, where they go traveling at the speed of light in all directions. Maybe they’ll sail on into oblivion never noticed by anyone, but what if one day on a distant planet, denizens of another civilization are able to pull in those programs and decode them? What might they think of us as they watch our goofball sitcoms, our trashy celebrity gossip, our mean-spirited political battles, the hellish stories of our wars, and the relentless, grinding exploitation of humans by humans? That would be so embarrassing, but what can we do? It’s too late to hide the truth. Our dirty laundry is out there for all the universe to see.
At the same time, I wonder if those faraway folks might have problems of their own. Maybe they, too, are struggling with evil. Maybe they’d understand us.
Sometimes I want to give a pep talk to the world: “Let’s get our act together. Here in our final days let’s make peace happen everywhere. And justice. Let’s go out showing the best in us.” But there’s no way we’re going to pull that off, so how about a smaller wish?
Maybe we could blanket our airwaves with programs that show our fierce longing to be so much better than we are. If we did this one last act of advocacy for ourselves, maybe those kindly denizens would see how much we wanted love to win despite the odds evolution set against us. Maybe they’d see how we suffered on the cross of human nature. Maybe they’d feel for us. Maybe they’d tuck us into some small corner of their affection. Maybe that would be our memorial. And maybe we’d be known somewhere out there halfway to eternity for the love in our hearts just a little bit more than for the evil in our lives.
But then I take a breath and come back down to earth. I don’t want to wait until light years in the future, and I don’t want to outsource. I want us to hold ourselves tenderly in our own hearts right now, especially now when hope is gone.
It used to be that I missed hope so much I would have given anything to get it back. But not anymore. I’ve paid the price in pain for crossing over to the far side. I’ve made a home for myself here. I can’t go back to hope because I know too much about it. I’ve seen the despair that’s hiding behind its happy mask. I know how it hurts people. I could never give myself to it again. Besides, it really is dead. So like it or not I’m stuck here without a choice. But if I did have a choice, even knowing as I do that this is a place of relentless sorrow, I would still choose here because sorrow is a living thing whereas despair is not.
Sometimes I think of love as a trio of verbs: see, receive, and enjoy. Someone sees you, they see behind the scenes, they see what it takes for you to be you, they see how far you’ve come in your life from where you started, and they see what you’re still struggling with. How often does this really happen?
Then maybe they take the next step and receive you. They open their heart to you and take you in. It doesn’t always work like that. There are plenty of times in my life, as you can imagine, when someone sees me, really sees me, what I believe and what I’m up to, and they can’t get away fast enough.
But what if someone takes you in and simply enjoys you because you fill them with yeses? It’s so much sweeter to be enjoyed than evaluated. Of course, I’d rather hear someone say You’re great instead of You’re an idiot, but still, praise is a judgment. Even when you get an A+ from someone, that’s a grade. When you evaluate, you’re stepping back and away. When you enjoy, you’re stepping deeper in: I love being with you just because I do.
As someone who was obsessed for decades with earning approval, I can testify that the whole considerable collection of approvals I accumulated during those years can’t begin to match just one moment of lighting someone up with my presence.
But if you were to ask me do I enjoy us as a species I’d have to tell you no. I’ve met people who say they love humanity. I always wonder if they’re really saintly enough to love the as-is version of us or do they only love the idea of loving us all. In any event, that’s not me. I can’t take delight in humankind. We do too much evil. We hurt each other too badly.
I can see us. I can see down into our operating system. I can receive us. I can be with the terrible knowledge of who we are. That I can do. I’m a much fiercer advocate for humankind now than I was back in the days when I was working so hard to save us. And I’m thankful to have come this far. But I’m not able to take that final step into joy.
So if love means taking delight in us, then I have to say, no, I don’t love humanity. But I do take sorrow in us, this heartbreaking species that we are, and isn’t that a kind of love?
