What is true? Last Tuesday, 800 miles away from me, two buildings were destroyed and our worst fears as a country and a world may come true. On Sunday, I sat two chairs away from a woman who has cancer. I was filled with the possibility that my own worst fears would come true—that her body could be my body, and that it would be my life that would become almost certainly unbearable. Are these fears connected? Yes, perhaps. Large traumas can trigger smaller traumas, fear for our own safety can take many forms. What I know is that the fear and dark imaginings of my mind can become the truth. My mind has the power to collapse in on itself, to go down the darkest tunnels into a hell where what I imagine is absolutely true. And it is always the worst—that the world is fundamentally terrifying, there is no safety, that I am absolutely helpless, exposed and hurt-able. And that more hurt will come.

What is true? That it takes more strength to uphold the internal structure of my being than it does to let it collapse in upon itself, like those buildings that just imploded. That there is relief in giving in to depression and hopelessness because then at least something is known. Hopelessness is a familiar and predictable pain because there is no chance that it will ever be surprised. In despair, all is known, and it is all already the worst. It is so easy to be tempted by the comfort in that, so easy to let the energy of hope slip right through your open hands, and to settle yourself under the quiet, frozen protection of complete resignation.

Chogyam Trungpa writes, “We must continue to open in the face of tremendous opposition. No one is encouraging us to open, and yet we must peel away the layers of the heart.” Why? May Sarton writes, “The only way through pain...is to absorb, probe, understand exactly what it is and what it means. To close the door on pain is to miss the chance for growth... Nothing that happens to us, even the most terrible shock, is unusable, and everything has somehow to be built into the fabric of the personality.” Why? Why would anyone choose to go through the door of pain when the promise of numbness that comes with abandoning all hope is so seductive?

So this is the choice: growth, in anguish, in love, in hope, in openness and fear, or death—frozenness, paralysis, numbness, silence. This is a choice, and at this moment I am only tentatively sure which way I want to go.

What is true? That we are each fundamentally alone, and that we are all fundamentally connected? That there is no refuge, and that there is always the promise of refuge deep inside of us in our connection to the Divine? That we are at once absolutely helpless and completely powerful? What is true? That each of us will die, alone; that we will be forced to loosen our grip on whatever we are most deeply attached to, and to give up resisting what fills us with bottomless and profound terror. What is true? This, I believe, is true: that the only thing worth praying for is the strength to remain open because through us, all other things will come.

This is what is true:

In this room
in this building
on this street
in this town
in the middle of this country
these hearts connect
and the world changes course.