Nothing is Wrong.

We'll be dead soon, anyway.

I was 33 when my mom died. In the months and years after, one thing became a touchstone, my comfort, a mantra I kept close for when anger started to suffocate and pull like an undertow, dragging me beneath the surface. Two people die every second. It’s true.

“This shouldn’t have happened! I’m supposed to have a mom,” I yelled to the dark mountain of grief sitting on my chest. Then, I would simply remember: two people died in the time it took me to inhale, another two or three on the exhale. Counting the newly dead as I breathed rhythmically was peace: it reassured that, despite appearances, nothing was wrong. I could be desperately sad and afraid, and, still, it didn’t mean something was wrong. People die. All the time. People are sad. All the time. It’s never been different. Ope, there goes another or five.

I didn’t delight in this, and no satisfaction came from others’ suffering. It just confirmed natural order, and, so, why would I be exempt from it? Moms die. Every fairytale prepped me for this. I will die, too, and, you, of course. We’ll be worm food, which is bird food, which is fox food and beyond. Maybe someday I’ll be a lilac bush in June! Would I even know how deliciously fragrant I was? Would I be able to drink myself in? Alan Watts, whom we’ll talk about later, says, “You can’t bite your own teeth,” so that probably means no, but, still, I hope.

My favorite documentary is Fantastic Fungi, a two hour banger about mycelium, the root like fungus that stretches underground, nature’s necessary undertaker, decomposing all plant and animal matter, transmuting it into life sustaining nutrients and energy once again. Mushrooms are its sexy fruit and get all the glory, of course, but mycelium is the invisible hero of this world. Without it, the fundamental processes of all ecosystems would fail, life would be unsustainable, and we’d be choked out by dead organic matter in no time flat.

Which reminds me of my favorite ASMR artist who cosplayed as mycelium and spent an entire video decomposing me, the viewer, on the forest floor. What relief! To be carefully dissolved by a rotter mushroom and her tapping, scratching, bubbling, and all other sorts of satisfying onomatopoeia. I hope it’s as relaxing when it inevitably does happen, when my carbon bonds are broken down and diffused. I hope Real Mycelium strokes my hair and whispers, too. My husband thinks ASMR is creepy, so I watch it like everyone else watches porn. “What are you doing?” Nothing!!

Most feelings are actually a melding of two separate things: the real feeling and the unnecessary, problematic story we write about the real feeling. There’s a Buddhist parable that explains this. “The Second Arrow” says life is painful; we experience loss, betrayal, disappointment, and it’s as acute and agonizing as being shot with an arrow. It, like, really, really hurts, dude. However, if we could look at the pain, allow it, feel it, it could pass. But, in our panic or petulance, we can’t. We freak out about the first arrow, get all twitchy, pull back our own bow and shoot ourselves in the same open, raw wound with more arrows: self-blame, victimhood, resentment, wild fear, pointed anger, bitterness. Oh god, is it infected? Gross. That’s not gonna heal right.

Pain is inevitable; suffering is optional. One can go to war against real feelings forever, “This shouldn’t be!” embroidered on a battle flag, but it’s futile; things are what they are whether we approve or not. And, once done, spent, wheezing, exhausted from our temper tantrum, Sad will still be waiting, filing her nails, tapping her toe, asking if we’re finally ready or what. Let go or be dragged, darling, as the Buddha would say.

True feelings are like ghosts with unfinished business, rattling chains, moaning down hallways, grabbing our toes from under the bed. They need us to feel them, so they can leave. They actually want to leave. How tiresome and tedious for all involved that we refuse.

Alan Watts is my favorite 1960’s irreverent mystic/guru, rascal Zen Buddhist. I often make the mistake of listening to him at work. An hour or two of Watts, and one is not sure up from down. It’s like looking at a picture of yourself, holding a picture of yourself, holding a picture of yourself. I might grab a coworker by the shoulders and whisper, “Can you see me? Am I here?” Regarding our desire to rail against what is, Watts said, “Things are as they are. Looking out into the universe at night, we make no comparisons between right and wrong stars, nor between well and badly arranged constellations.”

This seems truthful and sensible enough, and, yet, most people are either incapacitated by feelings, rotting in bed, writing pitiful and cryptic social media posts, rolling around in their own tortilla chip crumbs, or refuse to acknowledge them at all. I am baffled by both. You guys are making this harder than it has to be.

My mother-in-law is a lovely, brilliant woman - no cliche jokes here. She’s also the most productive human on the planet. At 75 years old, she’s just waiting for you to get out of that chair, so she can strip and refinish it before you get back from the bathroom. I found her standing on my kitchen counters last week, scraping off an ugly wallpaper border. She once alphabetized my spices. This wonderful woman probably wants desperately to stop moving, but she can’t: she might have a feeling. She’s spent seven decades outwitting and outpacing them like it’s her job, and my new, hand sewn curtains are GORGEOUS!, by the way.

She was raised, as many, to regard feelings as weak, self-indulgent nonsense. But, they’re all still in there, right? Where do they live? My children barely notice when I cry because I do it so often. I might be making lasagna and openly weeping when someone asks what’s wrong. “Oh, I’m just feeling some despair,” I say, spreading ricotta, mascara running. “Cool,” a teenager responds flatly, “Are there any more Takis?” Feelings are transient, ephemeral things as long as we don’t glom on and glue them down with a dumb story. So, the despair might be done before the lasagna dings, and, then, I’ll have my face deep in a lilac bush, quite contented, assured of beauty and possibility once again. My kids won’t notice that either, which is good; none of this is remarkable. It’s like breathing.

Perhaps the reason feelings are the undoing of so many is because we so desperately need it all to make sense, to tell a linear story, to promise we’re doing it right. Feelings don’t do that, and they resent the implication they should. They aren’t here to be lined up and rolled out for our agenda. They are here to remind us we are alive. Just like the the smell of cut grass, the sharp taste of lemon, our feelings confirm we’re really here, and this is what it’s like.

"I think we forget that life was never meant to be understood. It was meant to be felt. We spend so much time trying to figure everything out, to fix, explain, solve, control, but life is not a puzzle. It's a wave. And, you were never meant to carry the wave. You were meant to let it move through you. Sadness comes when we try to hold onto what's meant to pass. We grip the moment, the person, the feeling, hoping to freeze it in time, but everything you've ever loved was borrowed. Feel it. All of it. Because this, too, is part of the dance, and if you listen closely enough, even your pain is trying to teach you how to be alive." - Alan Watts

I had my 46th birthday last week, and a good friend, who knows me so well, gave me a gift certificate for a floating sensory depravation pod spa treatment. I’m giddy to go as it’s probably the closest I’ll get to being dissolved by mycelium until, you know, I get dissolved by mycelium. Instead of carbon, my stories will decompose, float away, cease to exist. My feelings might even bite the dust, the ghosts getting quiet. What solace! Even if nothing is wrong, it can all get so wearisome any which way, the feelings: whether we suppress, come undone, or just allow them, it sure can take a lot out of a lump of organic matter (wannabe lilac bush) like me. I’ll be in the pod; if anyone needs me, no you don’t.

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