It’s Mother’s Day and I am feeling affected but not sure exactly how. I am in a somber mood but also a pensive one. I’m not sad but I’m not happy. I’m contemplative but zoned out.

This morning I recalled how the other day, when not in present time, my mind wandering to other things – most of which were me feeling angry about the unfairness of certain things in the world, things I cannot change or effect directly – I spilled scalding hot water all over my hand. Brought immediately to present time by the event, I made sure to hold the cup until I could place it on a solid surface despite the automatic impulse to drop it and tend to the horrific burning sensation that was quickly spreading across my arm. Putting the cup down, I did not immediately tend to my burns but instead continued making my cup of tea. Once I completed the task at hand I put my hand under cool water and surveyed the damage. While my hand and arm seemed okay, the burning sensation had not abated despite the cold water.

After many minutes of feeling the burning sensation come and go in waves I recognized the pain was something I needed not avoid. In fact, the avoidance of the pain extended and even intensified it. So I sat motionless and focused on the pain, allowing it to exist and knowing it would pass and had something to teach me. Yes it was uncomfortable but in focusing on the pain I noticed it was not as bad as it seemed. I became curious about it even, noting the unique way my body registered the pain – the prickling hot sensation, the spreading and then abating as if my nerves were trying to decide whether a threat existed.

As expected the pain eventually subsided and I was left only with a sensitive area on my hand that felt similar to a sunburn. I rubbed some aloe on it and was able to fall asleep but not before recalling how my mom once told me of her own boiling hot water incident when she was pregnant. She had been making spaghetti and somehow tipped the entire pot of boiling water all over herself. In her case, she had not just burned her hand like me but a very large portion of her body. She had to lay in a tub of cold water just to bear the pain of it.

I wonder now if I had been the child inside her tummy at that time? Why did the memory of my mother’s story come to me so vividly when I had heard the story so very long ago, when I myself was still a child? Could this be a reminder that we are all connected? That one person’s experience can be recalled by another – re-experienced even – and sympathized with?

But this morning as I recall my own experience and tie it into my own’s mother’s, I am grateful for what it taught me. Pain is not something to avoid. Pain teaches. In fact, it is our greatest teacher if only we would stop and listen to it rather than pushing it away, denying and avoiding it.

Similarly, the pain of the world is also our teacher. When our hearts ache in response to the atrocities that exist in this world we should embrace the ache, hug it close to use even, as it is a reminder of our humanity as well as our deep connection to one another. It is not our purpose in these bodies to eliminate pain. On the contrary, it is to embrace it and let it teach us what we otherwise would not know. We come here, hearts completely open, knowing the pain we will encounter, willing to experience it so it can transform us. We do not come here to vanquish pain or those who appear to be the source of it. No. Our job is to transmute the pain into the Love that we are. For Love knows not the difference between “bad” and “good”, it is acceptance regardless of intent.

I am reminded of how how my own heart, open so wide as to let in the entirety of human existence in a moment, was so overpowering that I fell to my knees and pleaded for God to take it all away. Tears spontaneously poured from my eyes from the beauty and my heart ached from the simultaneous pain. How could I be both happy and grieving at the same time? How could so many contradictory emotions exist altogether as if one and the same?

And a silent voice inside me answers – Because they are One.

Happy Mother’s Day. May you embrace the Love that you are.