On Garry Shandling

There are things that happen in young lives so traumatic, so overwhelming, so unexplained that can wound us forever. Words of healing, compassion, consolation and understanding left un spoken can stifle our growth forever.

The wound forms within us in the area around our hearts and seeking to remain seals itself off open and gaping. It can never be adequately filled. Always hungry, always seeking, an open part of ourselves that like a dry gully or deep crevice weakens our structure and makes us vulnerable.

I call it the deep gaping wound and I warn my patients to be careful walking through life lest they trip up and fall into it. It is all consuming, never-ending. “Haven’t I done enough,” you might ask, and yet its need for fulfilment is unending and it may only be healed of its emptiness when you reach the end of your journey here on earth.

`Not everyone carries such a wound. Some are smaller and manage to seal over but those of us with the huge traumas unresolved and unhealed tend to carry them for life.

The way forward for me has been compassion, empathy and generosity toward my fellow man and woman on every imaginable level.

Loving and caring and giving really work. It may not fill or close the gaping edifice, but it softens the scar tissue around it.

As the scars begin to diminish, one might breathe a little easier, move more readily, sleep more peacefully, even smile more often. We grow less restricted than before, We learn what is lost and we learn to cope. But the emptiness, the longing remain.

(The Zen Diaries of Garry Shandling)

Time to listen to Bones by Laura Matthews & The Flakes