Sounds like a stupid thing to say - Didn't I know?
Last night I went to hear a musician friend of mine, Jean-Claude Jones, a bass player, appearing in a Jerusalem club named D. Grey with his colleague, a child prodigy named Ariel. I like Jean-Claude and his partner, Judith Posner, and I ought to have been glad to join them to hear original music, especially since there were other friends of mine in the audience.
However, Judith and I are linked by a double tragedy. Her son Eric was a classmate of Asher's in school, and Eric died about six months before Asher did. When I attended Eric's funeral, I was devastated, as we all were. How could I ever have imagined that I would be burying my own son in the same year?
"I know what you're thinking," Judith said to me, and she was right.
I did enjoy the music. I did admire Ariel's creativity. It was a pleasure to see Jean-Claude respond to Ariel both as a child and as a fellow musician, with tact and humor, and respect.
But I certainly wasn't happy.
The flashes of pleasure I experience are like the rush from a drug: they appear and fade away.
I woke up in the middle of the night last night and decided I was feeling sorry for myself, which is something I have never felt.
I have been exposed to metta meditation on some retreats I attended. This meditation exercise always begins by invoking compassion for oneself, and that always arouses resistance in me. But we are taught, correctly, that one cannot have compassion for others without first having compassion for oneself.
Which is not the same as feeling sorry for oneself.
Can I transform self-pity into compassion?
A good friend of mine, whom I have known well for more than thirty years and with whom I have shared many joys, is apparently dying of cancer now. Though we all refuse to give up hope for him, objectively speaking, there doesn't seem to be much hope. Just another thing to feel rotten about.
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