There was a picture in the studio where I used to teach. I can still see it, it hung on the wall in the bathroom, on dark green walls; it was, I think, a page of a magazine that was torn out and placed in a frame. I read it every time I was in there – 19 words sprawled across a picture of a waterfall - a quote form Nisargadatta Maharaj:
“Wisdom tells me I am nothing. Love tells me I am everything. Between the two my life flows.”
I first read it as a 20 something yoga student, and though it has always stuck with me, I didn’t always understand what it truly meant. Eight years later, then a teacher at that same studio, when I was teaching my last class, I read this quote. As a student and a teacher, I had made a home there, with a strong community of friends. I knew that after I was gone, though I had grown to love so many of my students, my classes would be taught by new teachers, and eventually, I would just be a memory; another blip in the lifespan of the studio. Life would continue, not come crashing down like it felt it would in those moments when I said goodbye.
On the last day of March this year, we lost a beloved member of our family. She wasn’t feeling well at Christmas and by March, she was gone. It was fast and it was devastating. Soon after, we headed to her home to begin the process of sorting through the things she left behind.
It was odd being there without her. She was a ferociously private woman and to be going through her things felt like we were violating something sacred, yet somehow, I knew it was truly an act of love. When we made it to her basement, we found the toy bow with mini arrows strewn all over the floor. There was a bulls-eye propped up on an extra dinner chair. Everything exactly where it landed the last time we were there, two weeks earlier, and our boys were shooting them with her. Even in the depths of her illness, she found the strength to play with them as she always had. Her presence was palpable, but the fact that she wasn’t there echoed on the walls. That massive house that she had so easily filled with her vibrant energy was empty. She was really gone.
After we made our way around the house, gathering and sorting, we stopped in the kitchen. There, on her counter, was her telephone. It had 42 missed calls. 42 times that phone had rang.42 times someone from the outside world tried to reach in. There we were, broken hearted in a house where it felt like time had stopped; toy arrows still on the floor waiting for the next time they’d be pulled across the bow, old cookbooks with discolored pages and notes shoved in them waiting for the next dinner prep, and there they were, 42 pieces of proof that the world continued even though we felt it crumbling around us.
In that moment it struck me, that quote from Nisargadatta Maharaj. At last, I understood it completely. Wisdom tells me I am nothing. Love tells me I am everything. Between the two my life flows. Everything and nothing woven together in that kitchen; a beautiful and cruel tapestry created by love, loss and the courage to go on.