We Will Have To Go On Breathing

I have a new dog in my home. Smokey is another rescue dog and we are deciding if he can stay. He has some problems – like jumping six foot fences and attacking other dogs. One of his greatest problems comes from the insecurity he feels for having been shuttled from one temporary home to another over his brief three years of life.

It becomes clear to me that we are both wounded animals. We have both suffered from neglect, rejection, disappointment. Both of us imagine humans have let us down, so we are both healing. The dog needs love, attention, structure and a secure unchanging home life.

For me, it is not so simple. When I feel wounded for experiencing too much loss, I think I must let the hurt rise in my awareness – I think I must go through the entirety of the fire even if the result is to become so much ash. We all know the story of the Phoenix, and I rest in that assurance.

And what of the hurt that rises from giving too much love? Kahil Gibran says that as “love crowns you so shall he crucify you.” He gives you the sustenance to rise to great heights and he descends to the roots of your being to “shake them in their clinging to the earth.”

One of my favorite movies is Castaway with Tom Hanks. I have seen it several times and have watched the ending of it many more times, because it speaks to me. I chanced again upon the ending scenes of this movie yesterday, and I could not look away. Tom’s fiance has remarried and had a child while he was cast away and presumed dead. He reconnects with her and there is a moment in the film when we believe she may leave her family and run away with him, her one true love.

When Tom knows for sure that this reunion will not happen, he accepts it and admits to his also wounded friend that he had also seriously considered suicide while on the island. The thing that saves him in both instances is summed up in the quote that graces the ending.  He says, “I will have to go on breathing, because tomorrow the sun is going to rise, and you never know what the tide will bring you.”

So the jury is still out on Smokey, and it is still out on John Deakyne.  Once again, the experience of loss carves us deep so we may hold more blessing. I cannot imagine what the tide will bring me, for I have been so overwhelmed with wonder and surprise over these last several months. And I am still overwhelmed that I am swimming in a sea of unlimited potential and need only open my mouth and my arms and my heart to receive its gifts.

I will continue to open myself to love’s "enfolding wings" and love’s wounding – and we will see what the next new day will bring.