Katheryn Kiker

Ironic that on Valentine’s Day I find myself motivated to talk about pain.

Tragedies locally and abroad have really gotten ahold of me lately. I found myself wanting to express how I deal when my heart gets too heavy.

When I was in my young twenties I remember very bewilderedly asking my then therapist how she dealt with so much suffering in the world and how she could possibly handle listening to people’s stories, their worst stories. She told me that she doesn’t turn away, she feels it and she lets herself cry. That she wasn’t scared of pain was a remarkable and revolutionary idea to me, and she very much so inspired me.

A few years ago I was listening to a Jack Kornfield podcast and someone asked how they can possibly enjoy a nice meal when people all over the world are starving. He basically responded by saying sometimes we get discouraged by all that we cannot do, and it keeps us paralyzed from seeing the little things we can actually do in our daily lives. I think of the Jason Mraz son lyric “sharing what you can, nothing more, nothing less.”

Jack said that he has a practice where he imagines that his heart is big enough to encompass the entire worlds pain. He sits, and imagines his heart growing around the whole thing. If you can imagine this brings up so much love and tenderness, grief and sadness. And this practice shows us just how deeply those emotions are intertwined.

We are affected by the world we live in- we can’t help it. It is not only inevitable that it would get to us, it is good that we care. Letting ourselves feel, and practicing making our hearts bigger than the pain are the little ideas that have kept me looking up through really difficult times. And in case you’re in the same boat as me, worried for people in our community and our world, I hope it helps you, too.