Through the decades, I have patched together my learning from developmental research and my daily mediation practice, focusing my professional life on two clinical populations:

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1. Homeless/street dependent teen parents and adults

2. Those of us who appear to be "normal." (People who seem to be relatively content and successful, but who, once we look beneath the surface, often reveal feelings of dread and loneliness.)

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While life circumstances are profoundly different for each of these groups (this cannot be overstated), I have continued to find that we all carry a remarkably similar intensity when it comes to internal struggle. I know very few people, once you listen deep into their lives, who do not experience a stunning level of hidden, personal pain - often on a daily basis.

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The human condition remains the human condition, regardless of who we are. No one escapes suffering.

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I've come to the following understanding of our shared human predicament:

1. Every heart will inevitably be wounded by an absence it cannot comprehend.

2. No heart can forget the presence it was born to know.

 

Presence and its shadow opposite, absence, are always center stage.

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To the degree that we know presence (along a vast continuum), we are at home in our lives. To the degree that absence defines our experience (along a vast continuum), we suffer.

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The homeless street kid, the diligent university student, and the celebrated professional all live within the same condition: trust is the lived experience of presence and suffering is the lived experience of absence.

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We can be in pain with presence and do well (enough).

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