We are all so fragile. We are, first of all, so fragile physically. When we are born, we can’t even feed ourselves or survive without continuous attention. And throughout our lives there are so many things that can go wrong, but mostly do not. It is actually amazing that the incredible intricacy of body and mind function so flawlessly for so long. This is the fundamental blessing of our life and all life.
We are also so fragile emotionally. We are complex beings, with complex needs—most importantly, the need to love and be loved, and the need not to be alone. It is easy for us to be wounded emotionally, and some of those wounds never fully heal. And yet we abide, as William Faulkner liked to say. We are fragile but we abide.
We all seem to have some kind of equipment, some neural circuit or switch, that keeps us from recognizing how fragile we really are. This switch is called “denial,” and recent research has discerned that it really is a neural circuit, or structure in the brain that censors or blocks painful memories. Denial actually makes painful memory neurologically inaccessible. As a psychiatrist friend of mine likes to say, “Never underestimate the power of denial.”
Denial is a kind of gift, too. Otherwise the level of pain that human beings sometimes have to endure would be truly unbearable and we could not continue to be.
I like to think of meditation practice as an intentional willingness to reach past the blocks of denial, and to open everything up—to face the actual suffering of ourselves and others. This was Siddhartha Gautama’s first insight and path; everything suffers, he saw that, and he wanted to actually face it and understand it.
Whether or not we are meditators, whether or not we are Buddhists, the process of aging does this too. When we are children or teenagers especially, the denial circuit blocking the fact how fragile we are seems at its strongest. That is one reason young men can be trained to be soldiers. They’re able to block out what it is they have to do. As we get older, and we have a lifetime of experience to hold and reflect on, denial becomes more difficult to sustain; the truth of our individual and common fragility becomes more evident.
And then there is the last truth, the final fragility, which we deny as long as we can, but eventually cannot—the truth of our inevitable end.
As with most things, fragility can be seen two ways—either as a burden, or as a gift. It is actually both. Fragility causes fear, but fragile things are also beautiful and precious, precisely because they are fragile and may not last. Fragility can open us to the treasure of mutual care and universal compassion.
We are all so fragile.
Growing older is giving me the courage to let my vulnerable self bloom.
Thanks for this, Lewis,
Came upon a sentence I’d copied from someone in the 70′s when in therapy. “Insanity is the result of trying to run away from genuine suffering”.
I will add here that it is also true of fear as you point out.It is part of us…not to be denied nor ignored.
My biggest fear is of losing my husband, a dear friend, cheerleader, crazy wisdom sort of guy, and I hope to pass before him. My own death doesn’t scare me..after skating it
several times in different operations…but his…a different story.
I try to sit with this fear until it ‘becomes’ me and no longer is ‘out there’. This happens again and again…
I want to say what a woman in my meditation group said into the silence the first time she heard the 5 Remembrances –
“I hate this.” Underscore “hate.”
Yes, losing one’s spouse. I know a lot of older couples who will privately admit this fear.
Re 5 Remembrances: I think the way it is taught has a lot to do with peoples’ responses. It could be summarized (I think) as “Life is precious.” If one appends that phrase at the end of each of the remembrances, it gives it a more positive cast, I think.
Ah, so fragile, so precious.
I was once told: you are so fragile. I looked into her eyes and saw fragility. We are all fragile and precious.
I have often felt as though standing on the edge of a precipice, leaning into the chasm up to the edge of falling, then the next breath comes home.
I have suffered my fragility, others suffered more by it. Now it is the very sweetness of life itself since I return from the precipice over and over having learned not to fear the harmless, I suppose, nor leaning over too far.
When I was told that I was fragile, I replied yes it is true, this is how I am.
There is something quite sane in making friends with being fragile. It seems to begin with becoming pliable in the face of impermanence:
like an exquisite pattern of light
a shimmer on water
fragile filigree of reflection,
broken by water disturbance
returning to perfect fragile appearance
upon water stillness.
This fragility is the very pattern language of being human and the expression of its preciousness, its impermanence. In my tradition we meditate on these, as two of the four things that turn the mind to Dharma.
This morning as I longed for a dear friend and wept. The flavor was sweet, not sad, the fragile transformed. Quite beautiful really.
Thanks Lew, may we be fragile upon still water.
beautiful poem greg. us sensitive one’s… I understand that precipice too. and the moments of sweetness, they are beyond.
Thanks for this lovely post, Lew. And I’m grateful for the thoughtful responses it has provoked.
Each moment seems so fragile. It crumbles away almost before awareness arrives.
Perhaps this seeming fragility enables the function of denial.
In my own study of this matter, denial seems to function more than anything to hide the intentions that shape nearly all action and speech.
How can we open in mutual care and compassion, if our intentions are disguised and denied?
That’s our work in each fragile moment – how is it, just now?
Was on my cushion just after I read this blog.
It came with me.
To be defended against vulnerability I see that I lose the possibility of being open.
To experience heartbreak, no matter at what time in life, is to
have the possibility of the heart being broken – open. That I do not wish to lose.
For those who have posted, so bravely and openly, including our teacher, this poem by Mary Oliver is offered in tribute:
Everything
I want to make poems that say right out, plainly,
what I mean, that don’t go looking for the
laces of elaboration, puffed sleeves. I want to
keep close and use often words like
heavy, heart, joy, soon, and to cherish
the question mark and her bold sister
the dash. I want to write with quiet. I
want to write while crossing fields that are
fresh with daisies and the everlasting and the
ordinary grass. I want to make poems while thinking of
the bread of heaven and the
cup of astonishment; let them be
songs in which nothing is neglected,
not a hope, not a promise. I want to make poems
that look into the earth and the heavens
and see the unseeable. I want them to honor
both the heart of faith, and the light of the world.
the gladness that says, without any words, everything.
Fragile. Vulnerable. And as Karen says, if I try to defend my fragility and vulnerability, the result is to block loving and being loved. Like the old Simon & Garfunkle song, “I am a rock, I am an island”. I tried being invulnerable once, after my first marriage. The person I later married made me see, almost against my will, what I was doing to myself and helped me take down the walls. And yes, Nan, the loss of such a partner is a fearful prospect.
The fragility that scares me most right now is that of the body, the fragility of my own health.
As I think I’ve written earlier on this line, my kidney function is very low, so I have qualified for dialysis for years, though I am not presently on it. It was not a good treatment for me. I am on a transplant list, waiting for a deceased-donor kidney. The average wait (for a type O) is 3 years. I’d like to get a kidney before I have to go back on dialysis. I have nothing to say about it.
Just a word then for the fragility of the body. The form, changing, out of our control. I so much like to live.
Lew – thanks for the blog and your insights.
This evening, my wife and I were watching a movie (Benjamin Button) and at some point she looked over at me saw that I was weeping–I cry easily at almost any movie or life event that portrays or expresses tenderness, thoughtfulness, forgiveness, family reunions, etc.
When I was younger, I was taught stay tough and not show that tender, open side of myself. It was only after a crisis that I discovered how shut down I was.
I can only speak for myself but I see hardship and suffering in my work, in my community and the world at large.
Maybe, at some level, being open may also mean that we have to get involved.
“Being open may also mean to get involved.”
This is the Bodhisattva vow.
“We are all so fragile.” That is another great truth in the category of: “Life is difficult.” One of my first teachers, through his book “The Road Less Traveled,” was Scott Peck. The first words were “Life is difficult.” He goes on to say that once we accept that truth then it ceases to be a problem.
I am fortunate, a paradox, to be an alcoholic. The program of AA again and again demands that I be open to what is, that I accept whatever is happening, changing only what is within my small sphere of influence: My attitude and my actions. I only get into trouble when I battle against what is. To me going to battle means that I am afraid, that I view something as an enemy out to get me. The truth is that all life is fragile but if I spend my time fretting about that fact, I only deprive myself of this moment. Like the beautiful cut glass vase my grandmother gave me, given to her by her grandmother. I used to keep it in a closet on a high shelf for fear it would be harmed. Now I love to set it out, filled with flowers. What is the point of a beautiful object or a loving heart if they are locked away for safe keeping? In the light there is the risk of breaking yet that is where life is.
Thank you, Lew, and others…this is a wonderful blog…i love mary oliver’s work, and love the comments. A friend and I spoke recently about how limitless the unseen reality of life is, how many years we were too busy to notice, and how really thrilling it is to have the time, the interest and the teachings and teachers to go deeper and deeper into the comonplace miracle of life. The limits (yes, even the limits)…are a blessing whether they be physical or just no longer being so “relevant” …..and not caring, in fact, feeling free. Fragile strength ……. maybe.
It has always seemed to me that other cultures (Eastern ones especially) have clearly deliniated stages of life –student, householder, scholar, ascetic ……at least it IS IN their culture as a philosophy of life, even if not practiced as much in the present “westernization” of the planet…but in our western capitalist culture, we are all fed denial – thru advertising, cosmetic surgery, viagra, ETC…..so it is against the grain to be embracing the gifts and losses of aging….but very joyful!
“Fragile” is a beautiful word and I love the tender way that everyone has held it in their posts.
I want to introduce another word though: resilience. Like all of Nature’s complicated systems, we are resilient. Physically and emotionally, we find many ways to cope with our troubles, and often we don’t know that we are being resilient until someone tells us.
A friend recently told me about his heart surgery (he and I share an ailment so his experience was of great interest to me) and he said that when the doctors looked inside him, they found that some of his arteries weren’t connected in the usual way. I blanched, but he reassured me in a very level-headed way. He pointed out that no one knows what is inside them unless the doctors take a look.
Running from fragility, grasping at resilience – two mistakes I think. Accepting both without knowing what is weak and what is strong, that should be our practice.
Fragile, not brittle; tenacious, strong within the fragility of being human. By helping others, I gain comfort. Their pain is mine; universal, unending, yet with underlying joy in just being alive, in this moment. It is enough.
What beautiful poems/sentiments. I thank all of those who have shared their feelings. Being fragile reminds me of the Tai Chi idea — when an attack is coming, go soft.
I guess that in going soft one absorbs the attack/problem and doesn’t set up resistance to it. And 2,000 years ago it was said to “resist not evil”, and about 30 years ago it was said: “resistance to the disturbance is the disturbance”. Fragility = softness = vulnerability = compassion?
There is also a beautiful collection of short stories in Spanish by Manuel Gutierrez Najera called Cuentos Fragiles that speaks to the fragility of human life, with its suffering and pain. I don’t know if it has been translated into English, but it tells stories about different peoples’ fragility when faced with various unfortunate circumstances.
“Go soft” registers with me, something a tai chi teacher tried to get me to understand. His wording was “yield.”
There is no problem. Resistance to that no-problem is the problem. (I am making perfect sense to myself.)