Devastation and how I Learnt to Feel more Connected to Humanity
Breathe in the fear
The experience of devastation is not only related to having a life threatening illness. Devastation can happen in any form and every one of us, one day, will (very likely) be hit by it. When that blow came for me, my world stopped. I remember how rapidly, my question of, How could this be happening to me?, slid, lightspeed into, Oh ###k, this is happening to me.
The floor disappearing beneath me.
The sensation of free-falling without the parachute. (I am scared of heights)
This is happening to me.
I journeyed through the myriad of doctor appointments and choices, and shared waiting rooms with other people with similar life threatening illnesses. Then, I began treatment. The waiting rooms of the Institut Marie Curie in Paris were filled with the most unsuspecting people. The chic elderly woman in a silk hermes scarf who held tightly to her leather clutch while sitting with her helper, the African woman in her 50s with her colourful cobalt blue headwrap, the man in his well fitted suit and yellow tie, probably in his 40s. The young mother wearing a wool cap to hide her lost hair accompanied by her exhausted husband. The manual labourer with his rough hands and thick fingers. The middle aged women, tightly groomed, possibly an executive from the corporate world. Nobody, I realised was spared. As my hospital visits continued, I shifted from my own self pity into being fascinated to know that this is not only my suffering. This is happening to thousands of people around the world at this very moment.
I spent hours in the waiting rooms of Institut Marie Curie in the 5th arrondissement of Paris. Sometimes I would find myself, breathing in the fear of my own experience and breathing in the fear of every person in the waiting room with me. Breathing it all in. Connecting to a part of humanity’s suffering. And then, I would breathe out love, sending love to myself and those with me in the waiting room, to those in the hospital floors above me and those around the world.
It sounds counter intuitive to want to do this. I often wished to be “rid” of pain, of the difficult experience of treatment. I wanted ease and comfort. However when I was in the thick of the fear, the suffering - there was no ease nor comfort. I wanted it to end but before that happened, I needed to go through it. And, I discovered, it is better to go through something with others than alone.
The surprising thing is that the sense of inter-connectedness from this experience, meant that I felt a lot less lonely in my own suffering (which felt insurmountable at times) and felt a profound connection with humanity and our commonality of suffering. This sense of connection gave me courage to keep going.
