To Be So Alive in Such a World as This

Falling in love with feeling, plus a poem

Dec 01, 2024

I had some time last week between two appointments downtown, and on a very windy Monday morning, found myself walking towards Granary Burying Ground, a centuries-old cemetery, itself buried in the crisscross of downtown buildings, brick and steel, old and new. Nestled between the Boston Athenaeum, Park Street Church, and Suffolk University, Granary Burying Ground attracts me like a magnet whenever I’m within a few blocks of it. Like the moon pulls the tides, I draw close whenever I’m nearby, and often when I need a reminder that I am taking Fear much too seriously. Despite what many people think, immersing yourself in the past doesn’t distract from the present moment, it supports and deepens our understanding of the Now.

As I’ve written before, cemeteries have long been grounding spaces for me. Despite a few wayward looks of horror that I receive from some folks when I express my love for these thin physical and psychological and spiritual spaces, I am grateful for my ability to put my deep love for cemeteries, especially in times when I am facing Fear or Doubt, into words:

“See, taking a moment to be cognizant of the fact that someday, you will die, helps to throw your life into sharp relief. It helps to put things in perspective. When I imagine being on my deathbed or think about my name on a headstone, I think: When I'm dying, will I wish I had taken the risk of teaching (or performing or writing or loving or getting on that freaking airplane, etc., etc.)? Even if it involves hard work and anxiety and sweat and doubt and people telling me I'm no good at it, will I wish I had done it?”

More often than not, the answer I receive among the grass and gravestones is a quiet but fervent “Yes.”

Fear is a feeling that can be incredibly uncomfortable. When we sense discomfort with feeling Fear – or any other emotion that can feel scary or less than enjoyable - we also (sometimes unknowingly, sometimes not) agree to shut ourselves off from feeling Joy, Ecstasy, Wonder, and Love, too.

When control over our emotions becomes our top priority, we end up sacrificing a sensory experience upon the altar of safety. How could such a trade be worth it, especially because Control is an illusion, essentially just Terror dressed up in a seemingly responsible, often self-righteous suit?

I’m currently treading water in a season of uncertainty, as I suspect you are in your own way as well. For me, walking into Granary Burying Ground this week allowed me to fall in love with the joy of feeling again. Again and again, I am willingly wooed into letting all the feelings, including Fear and Joy, slosh around in my chest, and trust that they are useful, that they have arrived with a message for me, and that being a generous host to them will soften me into a more sentient soul.

I no longer choose to believe others who suggest that deeply feeling is foolish, that it makes one unintelligent or belligerent or clouds our judgement. A feeling heart can fuel a goddess and it can fortify a warrior. I am a willing lover.

I love shuffling through feelings like one would a deck of cards, luxuriating in the sensations each one brings to me as it crests like a wave, eventually rejoining the sea of Me.

A very joyful, grateful Melissa in the Granary Burying Ground, Boston

As I make my way along the pathways of the cemetery amidst the tourists, I can feel my heart swelling and a ticker tape of all the feelings I’ve gotten to feel and get to feel clicking on by.

Click.

The ecstasy of what it feels like to be in love with my husband. The awareness that romantic love can be looked down upon as foolish, and right behind it, the more expansive sense of feeling an entire universe open inside my chest whenever I let myself exist in the depths of such a one of a kind relationship with another human being. There truly are no words – why not relish the feeling instead?

Click.

The deep love I have for Boston, for walking its wonky streets, riding its pokey subway cars, and for putting my shoes in the footsteps of all those who have walked before me, ever present on the sidewalk, guiding me along as we cross paths and diverge and cross and diverge again, forever. I am always connected to who has come before, and this timeless bond allows me to be more connected to myself and others, now, and for all the moments yet to come.

Click.

The way I can feel life moving through every cell of my body when I create new things: poems, pies, plans for our next trip to Scotland. What it feels like to walk down the street after performing in a play, having gotten to travel to a different time and place from a simple, static stage, and to have shared this suspension of time and space with an audience who paid attention. You look the same on the outside as you walk to the train after curtain call, but your body is buzzing with electricity and energy, and you’ve been charged, and changed.

Can you feel it, too?

What emotions make their way through you, like an electrical current that contains the whole universe? Can you allow pain to find refuge in your body? Can you invite joy to bring you home?

Over the course of my life, I’ve spent a fair amount of time with others who get scared to swim in their own ocean of feelings, to let it toss them around a bit, to be ok with getting water up their nose now and then. At times, I’m scared, too. While I’m not here to make anyone dive into the deep end who isn’t ready, I will no longer sit on the shore to make anyone else comfortable. You might be afraid of the dark, but I’m headed out into the deep so that when I die, I can know I explored the depths: Fear, saltwater, and all.

In her wonderful book, Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants, Robin Wall Kimmerer puts words to the desire to be truly present, to feel what there is to feel, and to be of the earth:

“However alluring the thought of warmth, there is no substitute for standing in the rain to waken every sense—senses that are muted within four walls, where my attention would be on me instead of all that is more than me. Inside looking out, I could not bear the loneliness of being dry in a wet world. Here in the rainforest, I don’t want to just be a bystander to rain, passive and protected; I want to be part of the downpour, to be soaked, along with the dark humus that squishes underfoot. I wish that I could stand like a shaggy cedar with rain seeping into my bark, that water could dissolve the barrier between us. I want to feel what the cedars feel and know what they know.”

Looking at the faded inscriptions on the monuments in Granary Burying Ground and the smooth edges of the stones that once were sharp, I am reminded of the absolute privilege of what it is to be alive, to breathe, to FEEL. Despite our culture telling us how uncomfortable, useless, and even dangerous feelings can be, I am perpetually grateful to practice letting any emotion that arises wash over me, and absolutely soak me with the astonishing experience of what it means to be here, now. I am grateful that I don’t temper these feelings or water them down. I feel Fear so often and there are times I am scared my heart might burst with the panic it brings. It’s ok. It’s safe to feel that way. I’m so glad to witness their value and power.

Whether we are comfortable with it or not, all the anguish, fear, embarrassment, shame and uncertainty we muscle through in each moment will eventually be distilled down to the dashes we see between dates on headstones. We can spend our lives resisting feeling our way through all the moments this life on earth brings us - for some of us, it’s tempting to think, rather than sense or feel our way through our inner universes - but I believe the braver, bolder, and more empowering path invites us to honor those uncomfortable emotional experiences by feeling them, and letting them become part of us.

Can we be like the cedars, letting it all soak in, and love our lives enough to trade “safety” for a sensory experience?

The world is a rough and wild ride, yes.

It’s gorgeous and tender, too.

Our earth is magnificent and human beings, though capable of all sorts of harmful acts, also do invaluable good every day. All the songs and books and television series and crafts and art you love, that have buoyed you, taught you, changed you at your core? Those gorgeous things were fashioned by human beings. You, too, are a human being. How wondrous. We can and should hold ourselves and each other accountable and we also deserve to be on our own side, no?

Someone runs a red light and nearly hits me as I’m making my way across the crosswalk.

“What a world!” I spit through gritted teeth.

Someone bends down in the community garden to cradle damp, black earth in their two chapped hands, moving it gently aside so that the small seeds they dream of growing can have a home in which to be born into being.

“What a world.” I barely whisper, holding my breath, lest I disturb the holiness of the moment, here in this cathedral made of birch branches and blue sky.

Today, I offer you my poem Granary Burying Ground, below. Take good care of your precious self, and each other. As always, I hope you read something you love, and if you do, that you take the time to share it with someone who might need to hear it.

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