Maybe This Is a Problem. Maybe It Isn’t.

Lately, I’ve been feeling sad a lot. It’s not an overwhelming depression feeling. It’s just grief. A sense of loss. No one has died, but things change a lot. Meditation and mindfulness practices make me more acutely aware of this. My study of Dharma tells me that this grief is a sign of attachment.

It’s not that I shouldn’t be feeling grief. It’s going to arise in me again and again, and maybe more often than in people who have a naturally more optimistic disposition. I don’t know, though. I can’t see into anyone else’s head.

The difficulty is that this grief is feeling overwhelming. I find myself withdrawing, making my life smaller. Maybe this is a problem. Maybe it isn’t.

I struggle to manage my expectations around relationships the most. There is an idealized notion in my head of what a given relationship should be, and the relationship inevitably is never that. Maybe it is for moments in time, or maybe I just delude myself for moments in time. Maybe I don’t even know what it is I want.

My current task is to question why I think I want a given thing from a given relationship. What are my motivations? How do I show up in this relationship and what does that indicate? Can I catch myself when I make assumptions about what the other person is thinking or feeling and realize that my assumptions aren’t the truth?

There are other queries I have. What level of effort is worth having close relationships? Am I better off keeping my distance or throwing myself into the fire? What do I even mean by close relationship?

I read somewhere that when you stop having questions is when you should worry. I guess I don’t need to worry, as I have plenty of questions.

There is not tidy conclusion for this post. It is open-ended, like the best questions and maybe the best answers too.