Before the pandemic I used to ride the subway- a lot. I love and hate the subway, which may one day be the title of my farewell letter to New York City. I love the subway because humanity is totally inescapable aboard that rattling, screeching car. There are all kinds of people crammed together staring at each other in total bewilderment. It can be a harsh view of reality, as well as a beautiful glimpse of the divine...
If you ride the subway long enough you become part of its ecosystem. Each person constellates the journey with their own special kind of crazy. I was proud to be the public crier. I don't mean the person proclaiming; I mean I used to regularly and silently weep on the subway. It was one of the best public services I have ever done- to sit among strangers and open my heart.
I have not ridden the subway in over a year. I'll be honest- I don't miss it at all. I do miss humanity, and I definitely miss the softening of hearts. Trauma has a way of icing us over. We are literally frozen in fear, trapped in pain. Sometimes it goes on so long and reaches so deep that parts of us become positively glacial. The inertia of ice has its purpose though- it protects us. We don't have to feel what we cannot yet face.
We are on the cusp of Spring again, a yielding that is so desperately needed after this bleak winter. It is a good time to sun the parts of yourself that have become suspended in numbing cold. Melting, it seems, is inevitable- just ask Greenland. How can we possibly swim in the rising seas of this new reality without first shedding the tears that will help us thaw? We need those tiny rivulets to gently carry us back to our warm, beating hearts and restore our desire for love, life, and maybe even subways.
I'll meet you there, with a handkerchief...
Travel back towards your vulnerability via the body's route of wisdom with this beginning level practice: THAW
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