by Maria Popova

Maria Popova wrote this poem as a collage, in a fascinating way. She has created one hundred others too, all named after birds. This is how she did it as a kind of divination: she read about the bird before bed, in the night the words would be swirled through her unconscious in dreams and then on waking reshuffled beside the ‘daily perplexity of living’, into a kind of poem-message.

This one speaks of the alchemy of sadness. Coming from a culture and upbringing where tears are thought to be a sign of something wrong, my heart swells with this opportunity to ‘enter into’ the crucible of sadness. As a mindfulness teacher and coach, I know without hesitation, that sadness, much of the time, is a kind of medicine for untangling our inner knots. We travel through the self-judgement and the tight muscles, and when we find the tears, something shifts and there’s a lift where before there was heaviness. Tears release valves which the rational thinking ‘get on with it’ parts of us like to keep closed. This brings relaxation, letting go and a gentle return to ourselves.

And yet if I let go of professional roles for a moment, I notice that, as a human being, I still find that avoiding tears and holding things in is one of my deepest habitual patterns.

I think this is why this poem is so touching for me – it invites me to where I know, at heart, that I long to go more and more. I know the beauty of tears. They can connect us with the tenderest truths in ourselves, in others and in life. The tender truths of love and loss, of vulnerability and openness, of hurt and of wonder. And under it all it’s the ever-present weave of connection, care and compassion that is touched. Sadness is a path to realness – to our ultimately defenceless position as human beings in this storm of life. But here’s the alchemy – it’s not only this, it’s simultaneously a path deeper into our miraculous heart that can defy circumstance, and that can go on growing into a ‘great globe of being that cannot but glow’ despite it all.

Ps. If you want to connect with the wonder and realness of your own life more deeply, while also embracing the ‘perplexity of daily life’, have a look at our Wonder of the Every Day course which begins in the new year – it’s a beautiful way to start afresh.

Photo by Transly Translation Agency on Unsplash