The Heartbreak School

 I am quite interested in Parker J. Palmer's unique perspectives in his book Healing the Heart of Democracy, and in particular a line where he remarks, "Everyday life is a school of the spirit that offers us chance after chance to practice dealing with heartbreak." (p.59) This perspective is interesting when Palmer makes a distinction between breaking down and breaking out. Whereas breaking down refers to the tendency for the heart to withdraw or even shut down in the face of pain and suffering, this breaking 'outward' is more like using the experience of heartbreak to open the heart to more tension. I tend to think of it as a kind of challenge to the sense that we can ever take our suffering and reduce it to a single explanation about who we are. Perhaps the meaning of suffering in fact is to leave a person completely in the lurch regarding who they are, but without denying them the sense of responsibility for their existence and how it is unfolding in the moment.
    In myself, I find it's common for me to withdraw from suffering by trying to see myself in it. I might start to blame myself for the problem I am facing or even put a label on myself for having this problem. Overall, it creates the false sense of isolation, as though only "I" in my special weakness could have this problem. In fact, it may very well be the exact same burden that everyone has, but when I put myself in front of the experience, I make it seem as though only I am having it.
    What would life be like if, rather than narrating suffering from the perspective of I, there was this vulnerable honesty about all the fragility that comes with suffering? What if I fully experience my fallibility and fragility, without having to name myself as being 'this' or 'that'--in other words, just experiencing the pain in the raw without putting any special narrative on it? I believe this is an interesting challenge that Palmer poses in his book which I would like to explore in my spiritual practice.