JONI MITCHELL, BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN AND WALKING AWAY

Back when I attended college in upstate New York I went to the Syracuse War Memorial for a double bill concert, Joni Mitchell was the headliner. The opening act was a scrawny, brooding, skinny, kick-ass singer-guitar player named Bruce Springsteen. (I was there for Joni). I must say that I have had an on again-off again relationship with Bruce. However, that changed recently when I listened to ‘Hello Sunshine”, the new single from his most recent album release.

Springsteens voice, with more restraint yet bathed in a deeper, wiser heaviness with a hint of hope, stopped me in my tracks when I heard him sing, “ You walk too far…you walk away.”

What really struck me was what I had heard a few days earlier at yoga practice. The dharma spoke of the “Only way out is through.” How does one reconcile the two mindful kernels of how to work on dealing with ones adversity? If you must continue to move forward in order to get out, then how far is too far, for fear of turning ones back and walking away?

Once in awhile, here at Mediate for Life, we have the occasion to work with a couple that thinks they want a divorce, but ultimately, what they needed was a way to find a new language to speak with one another. Otherwise, our clients step into the mediation sessions poised and ready to battle for divorce.

Couples in Divorce Mediation are angry, passionate, venomous, understanding, narrow minded,unreasonable,and pragmatic. However, the one thing that all couples carry with them and which affects them deeper and longer than all else is sadness.

The resolution arrived at in session that allows the Husband to hold onto his Fireman’s pension does not make him any less sad. The Wife’s retaining the marital house does not disquiet her sadness. There is a repurposing that has taken flight in America today. The classic and pure action of feeling sad has morphed into a religiosity of a sacred shrine to sadness. We find much more than comfort in dwelling in our past sadness. We permit ourselves to become immobilized and our brain to malfunction to dormancy. We simply slip down the rabbit hole of our self induced augmented reality.

If one wants to find their way to future happiness then one must keep walking…thru…the middle to the end of your sadness in order to get out.

You may be walking away, but you are taking yourself with you and the hope is, that with Mediate for Life as your guide, you are bringing a healthy, sustainable and newly elevated you into your new future.