There is no way to avoid pain in our lives. Pain does not come as a punishment, but rather as an opportunity for growth. When we can learn from the pain and receive it's gift, then we are free to go on. There is no such thing as successfully running away from pain. Sooner or later the feelings catch up with us.
I was reminded of this as I biked to the end of the pier in Santa Cruz and looked out at the Pacific Ocean. The dolphins were swimming about and were jumping and playing. I was admiring the dolphins when an older man came over to me and started talking. I asked Tony about his obvious New York accent. Tony held out his hand to me and said that he was from a large Italian family from New York. We had a few minutes of small talk as we leaned over the railing watching the dolphins. I learned that he had 6 children and had worked as a fireman and that he was now 85 years old and had lived in Santa Cruz for 35 years. When I asked about his wife tears came to his eyes and he started telling me his story. I initially resisted, but in the end I surrendered and stayed and heard Tony's story, which went on for close to an hour. I felt that it was important that I stayed.
Tony's wife had left him for another man 35 years ago. He shared how betrayed and sad he felt. Being Italian and Catholic, he felt that his marriage would last forever. Tony said he was shocked and heartbroken when his wife immediately wanted a divorce, so he moved out to California to escape the pain and memories. Once here, he worked very hard to build a new life. He told me that keeping busy was the only thing he knew how to do to keep away the pain. He figured that if he worked hard enough he would eventually forget about his wife and the pain would go away. But here he was, 35 years later, telling me his story as if it had just happened, as tears flowed down his cheeks. Tony had never done the inner work of understanding how he had contributed to the unhealthiness of their marriage, and then the vital work of forgiving his wife. He had tried to distract himself from his pain, rather than facing it. Now as an older man, he could no longer be busy and distract himself. He was forced to deal with his unresolved feelings. I talked with him for a while and I'd like to think that perhaps I was able to help him a little. At the very least I listened.
As I rode away I couldn't help but reflect on the fact that we simply cannot run away from our pain. At some point in our lives we must face our feelings and deal with them. How much easier it is to deal with our feelings and pain in the moment, rather than burying them where they rob us of our aliveness. Plus, it is so much harder as an elderly person to begin to sort out painful feelings.
When I was a teenager my father's father lived with us several months each year. My grandfather was very old and seemed stern to me and I was a bit afraid of him. My parents had taught me to always be polite to him, which I was. Still I didn't go out of my way to be around him. He used to sit in our living room smoking cigars, and I used to quietly try to slip past him, up the stairs to my bedroom. I didn't enjoy talking with him. Three times out of ten he would hear me half way up and begin to talk to me. I knew from what my parents told me that if that happened I had to go back down and listen. Sometimes the conversation was tolerable, but usually it was my grandfather wanting to tell me how his brother had cheated him in business. I stayed and listened, though I had heard the story many times. The incident with his brother had happened over 40 years before, but because he had never dealt with his feelings they were still haunting him in his nineties.
As a teenager I vowed to myself that I would never allow hurt and painful feelings to linger within me. I saw over and over again how difficult it was for my grandfather as an elderly man to deal with his feelings. He had tried to bury them, but sooner or later all feelings come to the surface. In some ways these unresolved feelings are like a prison keeping us locked up until we face them. The key to unlocking the prison is to do the courageous inner work of looking at our own responsibility in the situation, then forgiving ourselves as well as the others, and thus finding the gift in the situation that can help you for the rest of your life. It is worth any amount of therapy, workshops, asking for support and inner reflection to come to the point of feeling peace about a situation.
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