I should feel like everything is falling apart.
But underneath it all, there is a quiet sense that something is holding, opening even.
The last few months have been shaped by loss.
That is partly why I have been quiet here.
But I am still here.
And I am returning.
I lost a Facebook account I had poured years into. Six years of showing up, day after day. It grew into something I could never have planned, almost 700,000 people gathering in one place. At one point it came second in the world in a Facebook groups competition.
There was even a moment where Mark Zuckerberg introduced the group, and there I was, speaking. It felt surreal, like watching someone else’s life unfold.
But what stays with me is not the numbers.
It is the people.
During the pandemic, that space became a refuge. People came when they were afraid, when they were alone, when they were nearing the end of their lives. Some told me they felt me holding their hand or they heard my voice as they went into difficult procedures.
Others said the meditations gave them a kind of peace they had not known before.
Many have now died, friends I never met.
That space was not just something I built with the wonderful admin team. It became something that held me too.
And now it is gone.
I also lost my father just before Christmas.
Cancer took him slowly. I watched a man I had always known as hard, contained, almost unreachable, begin to break open. I had never seen him cry before. I was not sure he could. And then there he was, in tears.
There are moments that stay with you.
Not because you want them to, but because they ask something of your heart.
And then, last week, I lost my job.
Twelve years of my life, and just like that, it ended.
I am now redundant.
And yet, underneath it all, there is a strange kind of peace.
Not the loud kind. Not the kind that declares itself.
Something quieter than that. Something that simply remains.
In Buddhism, there is a teaching called the worldly winds.
Gain and loss.
Fame and disrepute.
Praise and blame.
Pleasure and pain.
They move through our lives like weather. Sometimes gently, sometimes with force. We tend to believe we are steering them, that if we just get things right, we can secure the good and avoid the bad.
“If I can just make this work, then everything will finally settle.”
But life does not seem to work that way.
We can give everything we have to something, only to watch it fall apart. Someone else can do very little and, by chance or timing, be lifted up. One day you are praised, the next you are questioned. One day you feel secure, the next something shifts beneath your feet.
Perhaps you have felt this too.
Maybe you have been praised for something you barely touched, smiling as it happened, knowing how little you had actually done. And maybe later, when you truly gave your effort, it went unseen.
Or perhaps your name has been spoken in hushed tones of hatred, quietly reshaped in the minds of others, until whatever you say only seems to confirm a story you did not write.
Or maybe life hands you something beautiful, a moment of ease, only for it to be followed by something that takes it away again.
Up and down.
Back and forth.
This is the movement of things.
At the deepest level, so much of our struggle comes from not seeing this clearly.
Everything is moving. Constantly. Faster than we can quite grasp.
Coming into being, passing away, beginning again.
When we cling to what feels good and push away what does not, we place ourselves in conflict with the nature of life itself.
So what can we do?
We learn to meet it with equanimity.
Not indifference.
In Buddhism indifference is seen as what’s called the “near enemy.”
From the outside it can look the same, but internally a completely different world is unfolding.
Indifference turns away. It closes down. There is a coldness to it, a distance.
Equanimity stays. Soft yet solid.
It allows. It includes. It meets life as it arrives, without needing it to be different.
It is said to be the most powerful of the Brahma Viharas.
Loving kindness.
Compassion.
Sympathetic joy.
And this quiet, steady balance of mind.
I will write more about these soon.
For now, I am stepping back for a few days. Not to escape any of this, but to sit with it more gently.
I will be writing again next week. And more regularly. More honestly.
I have also begun something new on YouTube. A space I hope will grow slowly, and with care.
If it calls to you, come and sit with me there, subscribe.
Here is the link to the channel, it’s called Everyday Stillness.
I will leave a video below.
Life will keep rising and falling as it does.
Perhaps all we can do is learn how to stand in the middle of it, with an open heart.
Christopher
