251. Why You Can't Escape the Sorrows of the World (and why that's a good thing)
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Henry: Hello, I am Henry Emmons and welcome back to Joy Lab.
Aimee Prasek: And I'm Aimee Prasek. We are in our series on grief. we're working with our Element of Savoring as well, and we're leaning on Francis Weller's work on what he calls the gates of grief. And heads up, we will be talking about gun violence today, so listen with care.
Right now we are going to look through that third gate, which is the sorrows of the world. This gate is about collective grief. It's about the losses that aren't exactly personal to us, but that we feel anyway because we don't exist in a vacuum. Uh, we are interdependent, meaning our livelihoods, our health, our joy, our everything is dependent on, is interdependent with others [00:01:00] and the world around us. I love this wisdom from, Dr. MarĂa Puig de la Bellacasa. She writes, "interdependency is not a contract but a condition, even a precondition." So there's just no getting around this. So wars, species going extinct, cultures being erased, poverty, injustice, violence, even if it's not in your own backyard, it absolutely influences you.
We take it in in some way and when there's loss, there's grief. Grief is signaled. It is inescapable because it is woven into our survival instinct. We are social animals who are wired to care about one another. And so if we think someone is immune to this, we think that they don't give a crap about anyone else or the environment or whatever.
I just wanna cite for a moment our last [00:02:00] episode where we talked about the second gate of grief, which is the aspects of ourselves that have not known love. And as we talked about in that episode, those aspects of ourselves don't need to be like these quote terrible things. They're just pieces of ourselves that we've rejected, which can include things like empathy and compassion.
So we may have been raised to believe that those things like empathy, compassion, trust were weaknesses, that they would make us vulnerable in some negative way. And so we might have pushed them down, not because they aren't part of us, but because we were taught or told to fear them. So this third gate reminds us that we are connected to the sorrows of the world, whether we believe them or not. And those sorrows, the losses all around us absolutely impact us.
Henry: Yes, they [00:03:00] do.
We live in Minnesota. I think everybody knows what's going on here right now, and it's inescapable, as you said. That what's affecting some of us is affecting all of us really in a big way, a really big way. So I cannot help but think about something we've talked about before, which we call the illusion of separation. It's something I consider to be one of the enemies of joy, and I think it even might, might be the most powerful one because it just has such an impact on mood. So this illusion of separation is the belief that we are basically isolated individual beings separate from one another at the deepest levels going through our lives [00:04:00] basically having to rely on ourselves. No one else is really there for us. Now, this is tricky. I admit this is very tricky because on the surface, there's a lot of evidence that makes us think this is true, right? Because we, in fact, we do walk around in our own skin. We are, we are physically separate from other people.
And then of course, there's so much going on inside each of us that nobody actually sees or knows about. And then who hasn't had the experience of feeling left out or just of feeling that they don't belong. And in our society, you know, if we get into financial trouble or some other kind of trouble, we probably find out pretty quickly that in fact, in many ways we do have to rely mostly on ourselves.
And yet every great spiritual tradition tells us otherwise. They tell us that [00:05:00] we are part of something larger than ourselves. We are united in ways that we don't easily see or understand. We're united with other humans to other creatures, to the earth, to a higher power. So whether we believe this or not doesn't change the fact that it's true. We can't opt out of it. It's a deeply woven interconnection that we are simply born into. So the only real effect of seeing ourselves as separate is that it creates this huge psychic, emotional burden that we just don't need to carry. And I think that the more strongly we believe in this illusion, frankly, the harder it is to access real joy.
Aimee Prasek: Yeah. Man, the illusion of separation touches everything. You, you noted too that [00:06:00] it's tricky because we are in these physical bodies separate, but there's an illusion there too, like that our physical bodies are only functioning within like our own cells. We'll talk, I wanna get into that a little bit more later.
That illusion that our, our physiology is just operating in this little tiny, container of skin. Um. But you also know that we can't opt out and if we fall into this trap and try to close ourselves, ourselves off, that there's a huge psychic emotional burden, and a physical burden. So, Joanna Macy, who passed away last year, fascinating philosopher, described something called double anxiety. Which is anxiety about the state of the world plus anxiety, about having that anxiety.
Henry: Hmm
Aimee Prasek: Yeah. We've, we've touched on this,
Henry: Mm-hmm. It's, it's just one of those [00:07:00] tricky, tricky aspects of the mind, isn't it?
Aimee Prasek: Yes, this layering
Henry: Layering.
Aimee Prasek: Anxiety and this meta experience, and it's common to fear this anxiety, this despair so much that we push it all down, choosing, unconsciously often, to fall into this illusion of separation rather than feel and grieve the sorrows of the world. But that shutting down and shoving down is destructive.
And it's exhausting. It's doubly destructive. As Macy notes, she also writes that "the mind pays for its deadening to the state of our world by giving up its capacity for joy and flexibility."
Henry: Ooh, I really like that.
Aimee Prasek: Yeah. Not just that. She goes on that we not only give up joy and flexibility when we shut off our care for the world,
that's a lot, But we, we like really give up everything quite honestly. She writes, "the energy [00:08:00] expended in pushing down despair is diverted from more creative uses, depleting the resilience and imagination needed for fresh visions and strategies. Fear of despair, erects an invisible screen, filtering out anxiety provoking data. In a world where organisms require feedback in order to adapt and survive, this is suicidal."
It's kind of meaty there. She's not mincing words though either. When we put up a wall for our caring and grief, is what she's saying, when we put up these collective sort of conditions on our caring, of when we'll grieve or for who we'll grieve, maybe based on politics or religion or whatever, then we risk our livelihood. I'll give what feels like a, a timely example when we try to convince ourselves not to care [00:09:00] if somebody gets shot because they're an immigrant or liberal, or a conservative or black whatever the label we use to create an illusion of separation from their humanness, we are rejecting that caring part of ourselves. We are blocking and fighting our instinctual response to tend and to care. And that rejection, that blocking is one of the most destructive things we can do to ourselves.
Henry: Mm-hmm.
Aimee Prasek: 'cause it also just blocks in any of the other information, as Macy notes, that that information we need to survive. And I think we get sucked into this so often because we lack the skills and the courage to hold these collective sorrows in our minds and hearts.
And I think we can be gentle with that realization because this is work that society has failed us in many ways. We should have been [00:10:00] taught how to collectively grieve. We expect to be taught this as a social animal. Look around crows, dogs, elephants, they all do this. So often we do not receive this training or we actually blocked from even sort of exploring these instinctual drives.
We'll talk about that kind of loss next episode. So we do have to work to build these skills and this is courageous work. Macy also writes, "don't be afraid of your sorrow or grief or rage. Treasure them. They come from your caring." So we can do this. We're absolutely wired to care as a survival tool.
And it takes practice if we hadn't been practicing for a while or we haven't had it modeled to us. So how do we do that? How do we stay open to the world's suffering without being destroyed by it? How do we hold care and [00:11:00] sorrow for folks who we don't agree with? How do we tune back into our natural inclination to open up, to connect,
to collectively grieve, ultimately live a more fulfilled, meaningful, joyful life. Those are the questions of this gate, and I love Weller's answer of how to do this. He says it's entanglement. Entanglement. I love that so much because it is one of my favorite definitions of joy as well offered by author Ross Gay.
He defines joy as the practice of entanglements. So it means recognizing that we're not separate, that my wellbeing and your wellbeing and the planet's wellbeing are interconnected, interdependent, that we must grieve and heal together because we're all inescapably entangled.
Henry: Hmm, boy. Talk about entanglement right now, where we [00:12:00] live, we are that,
Aimee Prasek: Yeah.
Henry: You know, Minnesotans have a reputation, I think for being a little bit emotionally suppressed, just, just, I might be wrong about that, but I think that reputation is out there. But having been rocked by not just the recent events, the shootings, the ICE involvement in Minnesota, but several things over the last very few years.
I mean, there's a level of collective grief here that I have never seen in my life. Maybe if you go back a ways, you know, in our history it's been like this, but it is really pretty profound right now. So, I wanna go back actually a few months to an earlier really, really shattering loss that we had in, in the Twin Cities, back in September, which was national news at the time [00:13:00] when someone shot into the Catholic school, the Annunciation School Assembly at the beginning of their school year, and killed several small, young, young children. So I see clients and just a couple of days after the shooting, I heard from one of my clients who asked to be seen urgently because he was so distraught about this. Now he lives close to that church where the shooting happened and when he heard pops in, in, in that morning, he'd heard him, his, his, he had his windows open and he could hear 'em from his house.
He knew it was gunfire. Immediately. He ran to the church to see if he could help. He ran to where he heard the gunfire and by the time he got there, there just wasn't much he could do. Already emergency vehicles were arriving trying to keep people away from the scene, but as he stayed there, he saw these horrified parents [00:14:00] coming who had no idea if their child was alive or not. And he could see the chaos, the fear, the anger, and just these raw emotions with such a feeling of helplessness. And so he just stood there crying for what I think was kind of a long time. And over the next few days, he began to have nightmares, panic attacks, feeling more depressed.
He, he felt so bad that he didn't do anything, that there wasn't anything he could do, that he, he was powerless and he even felt bad, kind of like you were saying earlier, Aimee, feel bad about having a bad feeling. He started to feel bad that his emotional reactions were what they were after the fact. So I was actually so moved by listening to him.
He is a big, burly, outwardly, tough guy, and he was so [00:15:00] deeply affected by this because he was entangled, but I think in such a good, even though a painful way, so I, I don't remember exactly what I said to him, but something to the effect that what he was feeling was normal. It was good, even though it felt so raw and distressing.
And I just encouraged him not to keep it inside, not to stuff it, but if possible, to express it, to find ways to be with others, you know, to honor his feelings, honor them. They were just an absolute, immediate, very human reaction to something horrible. So to me, he exemplified that we are not separate. That what harms you also harms me.
And that we are truly all in this together.
Aimee Prasek: Hmm. Yeah, that's it. that wisdom to [00:16:00] find ways to be with others and to honor our feelings. Just thinking too, like his inclination to run to help. That's what we do.
Henry: Running towards what he knew to be gunfire.
Aimee Prasek: Yeah.
Henry: Yeah.
Aimee Prasek: So this gate, these sorrows of the world, reminds us that our physical bodies, our mental states, are impacted by what's around us. And this gate reminds us that our route to working with this grief has to happen in connection too just like you just illustrated with that story. Research on social baseline theory I think is really helpful here.
Social baseline theory suggests we didn't evolve to regulate our nervous systems alone. Instead, we're wired to regulate and to move through the sorrows of the world in connection with others. Our brains actually process threats differently when [00:17:00] we're with people who we trust versus when we're, when we're alone.
And we've, talked a lot about how we sync up physiologically, energetically with folks around us in past episodes. I was noting, when we started here about sort of that illusion of separation of the physical body. We've talked about physiological synchrony, brain-to-brain coupling, collective effervescence, emotional contagion, I'll link to episodes in the show notes.
So the research is just so clear here that interdependence is our condition. And I think as we are witnessing as a global community. This process works both ways. Just as we're wired to calm our nervous systems as a community, which is called co-regulation, dysregulated, nervous systems can also negatively activate, influence each other. Yes, we've seen many videos of this. That's called co [00:18:00] dysregulation, and it's rapidly toxic. It escalates violence, and I think it's crafty because that kind of frantic, turn and burn, overactivated energy can feel productive. But it's not. It's sloppy when faced with anything complex, it's fear-based.
It's reactive, it's inefficient.
Henry: Mm-hmm.
Aimee Prasek: We maybe like less intense examples. We talked about this with some of the science of pathological productivity and worrying like that false sense of productivity. I'll link to those episodes in the show notes as well. It, it applies here as well to this just kind of this physical interpretation of effort.
Right. Effort, justification. Well, if I'm doing more, if I'm activated more, I must be doing something good. No, no, no. Uh, But we don't have to get stuck there just cycling and stress and overactivation. We can come back to co-regulation by focusing on building some healthier communities. But [00:19:00] first, we have to be open to these sorrows. These collective losses to feel what we feel like your client said. To really see them for what they are so that we can process them the way our system is designed to process them. Which is to let the grief move through us rather than stuffing it down and having it come out sideways in dysregulation. So how can we open up to these sorrows of the world? Can you give us some ideas,
Henry?
Henry: I am gonna talk about two ways to do this. One if you're doing it by yourself, and then a second option for doing it with others.
Aimee Prasek: Perfect.
Henry: So here's a simple way to be with your, feelings by yourself without stuffing 'em or pushing 'em away. Just take 10 to 20 minutes to do nothing. So you're not meditating,
you're not journaling, you're not trying to process your [00:20:00] feelings. You are just sitting. And as you're sitting, you can turn your attention to your chest and your belly and just ask yourself, what am I feeling right now? That's all. Turn your mind to your midsection and ask, what am I feeling right now? And then you can ask yourself, can I be with that?
That's a legitimate question. Can I be with it without trying to fix it, without needing to do something? At least not immediately. You might choose to do something later, but for a few minutes, just see if you can be with the feeling.
So here's the second option. This is something I experienced just this weekend after another shooting death in Minneapolis. There was a call that went out to people involved with these song circles, which I have mentioned [00:21:00] before.
Aimee Prasek: I was thinking about song circles this weekend, which says a lot because I wanted to be involved in one.
Henry: I'll tell you what this was, this was amazing with, with less than 24 hours there were about 1200 people that showed up in a big church on Hennepin Avenue. Hennepin Avenue Methodist Church, and for a couple of hours, all these people just sang songs together, it's kind of a call and response thing.
And they were related, you know, that was a way of, of accessing all of our emotions, you know, the grief, anger, love, um, compassion, all of them. And, doing it in this kind of weirdly intimate way of singing together. Which seems, you know, it may be on the surface like you're not really doing anything important.
I think it's hugely important. [00:22:00] What happened there. People were so moved, so felt, so interconnected. I mean, it was, it was beautiful. It was just beautiful.
Aimee Prasek: Yeah, I felt like I wanted to be in one this weekend, which was shocking because A.) introvert, B.) don't like to sing.
So you know, it just reminded me too what was happening.No matter where you see yourself as introvert, extroverts, singer, non singer, like when we open up to those, to what we're feeling, so often, it is that, that call for connection.
Henry: Yeah, there's something about this, this shared human voice that people are just, you know, it, it makes zero difference whether
you consider yourself a good singer or not. It's just this, this, I don't know, kind of getting it out, getting your voice out, mixing it with all the others. There's something kind of strangely magical about it.
I just think it's [00:23:00] super cool.
Aimee Prasek: Well, it is certainly like in our DNA right. Song and ritual, so yeah, I'm sure it's, it sparks some, some healing from millennia ago too, like deep in our bones. We'll talk about ancestral grief and healing in a later episode. So, I wanna come back to maybe the community piece of connection. Because even though I found myself absolutely shocked by my desire to join a song circle this weekend, there are other connections you can make.
You know, it can be hopefully in person if possible, online if you need. The point is co-regulation rather than co-disregulation. And it is essential to our survival as Macy notes and as every bit of stress research will demonstrate as well. So the other thing I may wanna note here is you don't need to gather or find somebody and [00:24:00] be in a group of folks who are perfectly calm to do this. Simply connecting with someone slightly less activated than you, and kind of, which I'm guessing the people at the Song Circle are very sort of calm and in their space of, of collective grieving. So that's like peak.
But you can just find one person that's slightly less activated than you savor in that, it'll calm your system. And when you do that, I think here's what's so powerful about this;
there's a new feedback loop that you can create. So one that you know, when loss pings you, when grief hits you, then you'll be more likely to open up
rather than less. You'll be more likely to grieve with others, rather than shut down to regulate with others rather than disregulate and amp up, to create change with others, positive change, and to heal together. And I love some Mary Oliver wisdom on who these [00:25:00] people are that you might wanna seek out. She writes, "Let me keep my distance always from those who think they have the answers. Let me keep company, always, with those who say, look and laugh in astonishment and bow their heads." Find those people. They will calm your nervous system.
Might be a church group, song circle, a group planning a collective memorial, a weekend club that picks up garbage and eats waffles together.
That's the group I wanna start. Whatever it is. It doesn't have to be a big group. One person is enough, right? Two waffles and two bags to pick up garbage. That's all you need. So I'll link as well to our episode on third places and building a house of belonging in the show notes.
I think that's really a really good episode, some guidance, uh, some more science as well on how to connect with folks who can nourish you.
Henry: You know, when we face something as big as this, as big as the sorrows of [00:26:00] the world, I think it's really easy to feel overwhelmed and powerless. I know lots of people feel that way right now. At, at this moment our collective grief is really great. So I'm gonna just kind of summarize my advice in a nutshell here.
First, see what is and try to see it really honestly. Try to see what's true and remember that staying informed does not require you to be immersed in all of this 24/7 or keep rewatching videos and all of that.
Second, let yourself feel what you feel. If it's at all possible, do it with others. Third, take action if you feel moved to do so, you are doing something important, remember, even if you are simply being a quiet, steady presence for others. [00:27:00] Next, keep your heart open. Whatever else you do, do not let this shut you down. Stay open. And then take care of others as best you can.
I think collective sorrow is a call to unity. It's a call for belonging.
Aimee Prasek: Yeah, that is a call for belonging. God, grief works in funny ways, doesn't it?
Henry: mm.
Aimee Prasek: It unites us.
Well thank you so much folks for staying with us for this gate. This is deep, courageous, life sustaining work. We're all wired for it. Our next episode, we will explore a gate that is maybe quite a bit different, at least on its face. It's Weller's fourth gate, which is what we expected but did not receive. So we'll talk about disappointment, longing, and that deep [00:28:00] human need to belong Until then, let your self care, as Henry said, let yourself grieve and know that you're not alone in this.
To close this, I want to share some wisdom from Skye Cielita Flor and Miraz Indira from their essay hits on some of the power of collective grief. Here's what they wrote. "Grief is brought forth by the safety and holding capacity of the communal nervous system. We cannot and should not do it alone. We have evolved to open together and carry each other into the places that scare us just as we have evolved to sing and praise and dance and grow together."
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