You'll notice I didn't ask questions directly relating to religion. I suspected a lot of the questions would inspire spiritual discussions, and decided to broach the subjects that way. You may also notice that none of the tweets have any typical Twitter slang—no abbreviations or emoticons. For the sake of reading ease, I corrected misspellings and omitted excessive punctuation. Lastly, you may wonder why I didn't start each section with a TinyBuddha.com quote, as I do on the site. The simple reason is that I wanted this book to explore our collective understandings, which often parallel many of those same ideas.
I want you to read this knowing that you are not alone. Whatever question you're asking yourself right now, someone else somewhere else—but probably a lot closer than you think—is wondering the very same thing. If you search Twitter for emotional words like happy or frustrated—as I tend to do when coming up with blog topics—you'll find a seemingly infinite number of similar thoughts, feelings, problems, observations, and conclusions.
The questions are what unite us. It's up to me, and it's up to you, to identify and use the answers that empower each of us as individuals.
PAIN
WHY IS THERE SUFFERING IN THE WORLD?
No matter who you are, no matter what you have, no matter what you've achieved, you've hurt at some point in your life. Of the six universal emotions psychologists have identified—happiness, sadness, surprise, fear, disgust, and anger—the majority indicate pain.
Most of us know that what our grandmothers said was true: “This too shall pass.” But it doesn't always seem that way in the moment. When all those pain-induced hormones flood your body, pushing you into survivor mode, it can feel like some catastrophic turn of events has irreparably damaged your life—like your world has permanently fallen apart. If you don't worry hard enough, things might never change. If you don't get angry enough, you'll be accepting that what happened was okay. If you don't get bitter enough, you're opening yourself up to more of that same disastrous hurt.
Right?
No. It doesn't work that way. No matter how justified we feel in our emotions, stewing in them is never the answer to making them go away. Stressing by itself can't create a solution—any solution, let alone a rational one. Anger doesn't punish the people or circumstances that hurt us; it punishes us. And bitterness doesn't protect us from pain down the line; if anything, it invites it.
Emotions are not resolutions—and yet we have to let ourselves feel them. Suppressing emotional pain more often than not just creates more of it. This is where it gets confusing: If we're not supposed to resist our feelings, how do we know when to let them go? How can we both allow ourselves to feel what we need to feel and be sure we don't let the present moment pass us by?
In 2003, I sublet a small, unfurnished studio in New York City for a few weeks to figure out how I'd survive if I moved there to pursue my acting dreams. It was in August, and the Times Square area was like a sauna crammed with people sitting arm-to-arm, on laps, and on laps on top of laps, except no one was actually sitting still—we were all trying to get to different places with that New York sense of urgency.
A couple hours after I got the apartment keys, I headed out to hit up the ATM and pick up groceries and other supplies. While I was on my way to the corner store, Manhattan went dark. I didn't know it at the time, but New York was part of multistate power outage. The traffic lights went black, which gave pedestrians the green light to storm the streets, causing massive traffic jams. People began rushing into convenience stores to get provisions for the hours ahead. It was total chaos, and I felt panicked.
I didn't have any cash—or food or candles or a plan of attack. So I sat on a curb, leaned up against a mailbox, and tried to control my breath. Apparently I was more gasping and panting than inhaling and exhaling because a man squatted down, put his hand on my shoulder, and said, “Honey, are you okay?” I didn't see that coming—and I also didn't expect he'd listen to me ramble about just arriving, not having any cash, and fearing I might need to sell my body for a sandwich, a flashlight, or both. Without flinching, he gave me $5 and pointed me toward a store. Crammed with panicked, sweating people, the inside reeked, like body odor and cottage cheese after extended time in a beach bag. I was able to grab a bottle of water, but I didn't have enough for food, and the options were getting slim as other people rushed to grab what they could. The woman behind the register gave me a roasted half-duck, and took down my credit card info to charge at a later date. I had food and water; now all I needed was light. Naturally, $5 flashlights were going for over $20 a pop on the street—good old supply and demand. So I ducked into a restaurant, told the bartender my story, and left with seven tea lights.
It was increasingly crowded on the route to my apartment, so I paused in Times Square, which was kind of awesome in its darkness— now that I knew all my basic needs were met. It was like going backstage before a Broadway play, seeing the man-made framework behind the illusion of magic. In fact, it was very similar, since all kinds of people were gathering around musicians putting on impromptu shows. I struck up a conversation with the girl next to me, telling her how surprised I was that New Yorkers were so friendly and willing to lend a hand, even with their own needs to attend to. She said New Yorkers band together during crises, particularly after 9/11. They look out for each other, and they're a lot more compassionate and helpful than the cliché might indicate.
I can't remember her name, but I'll never forget what she told me next: both her father and her boyfriend died in the Twin Towers. In one day, only a couple years before our chance encounter, she lost the two people who mattered most to her in life. They say some deaths are senseless when you imagine they could have been prevented, but death rarely, if ever, makes sense—particularly not when it comes as part of something so deplorably inhumane. I looked at her sitting there, strong, intact, no different looking than I was or anyone else who hasn't known such grief. I wondered how she could go out in the daylight, looking peaceful in the world, knowing firsthand how tragedy can strike so unexpectedly. I looked deeply into her eyes in a potentially invasive way, searching for signs of pervasive inner turmoil. Having endured such a horrific tragedy, she must be a shell of a person, I thought, particularly so soon after her losses.
Then I remembered where I was right before I learned about the 9/11 attacks. I was festering in bed, six prescription bottles on my nightstand, wondering who'd come to my funeral if I died. I'd been in therapy for almost a decade, and yet I still suspected I'd spend the rest of my life feeling alone, miserable, and confined like a prisoner within the deafening cruelty of my mind. I was a chubby, overdeveloped twelve-year-old the first time a boy groped me and called me a whore in the school hallway. After years of hearing “fat slut” from both boys and girls alone and in packs and being grabbed without my consent, I'd begun to believe my consent wasn't necessary. Once, a girl from a neighboring school told me, “I've heard you're thinking of changing schools. Don't bother. Everyone everywhere knows you're a worthless whore.” From that point on, I truly believed this was fact—that everyone I met somehow already knew how pathetic and worthless I was. A decade later, at twenty-two, I still felt trapped under layers of shame and regret, like dozens of lead-filled X-ray aprons piled one on top of the other. I'd tried to starve it away, stuff it away, drink it away, and fight it away, but nothing changed that I felt trapped within my offensive, unlovable skin.
I called my aunt to complain about my misery; I had a roster of regular listeners who indulged my desperation. Not a few seconds into my woe-is-me story, she asked me, “Lori, how can you be thinking about yourself? Don't you know what's happening in the world?” I didn't have any idea. I turned on the television and saw the footage. They kept showing the towers going down, like sand castles slowly crumbling, and a part of me felt like it wasn't real. I knew that people were hurting and that I should be outraged. But I'd numbed my own feelings for so long that it