Our reaction to this is filled, understandably, with ambivalence, which is only a smaller form of paradox. At once, it’s depressing, never to be free of the breaking that keeps forming the world and the suffering that afflicts its inhabitants. At the same time, it’s humbling and mystifying that we’re all exposed and enriched by such an inevitable process of feeling.

Our personal suffering is often intensified by our want to control life. And failing to be in control while believing in control makes us feel accountable for all that breaks along the way, and so, there is guilt. But where guilt is secreted by a controlling mind, compassion emanates from an accepting heart.

Compassion connects us to the suffering of others. It has a magic all its own. Guilt, in effect, is an intellectualization of compassion that twists into a peculiar kind of mental pain. Compassion, however, fuels those who share their suffering with reserves of energy in the form of love. More often than not, the compassionate are strengthened by the fullness of that Divine Ground of All Being that joining with another makes present.

There is no question that the experience of great breaking brings with it a terrible knowledge that is life altering. And whether that breaking comes about by accident, injustice, abuse, or disease, suddenly and irrevocably we become forever aware that out of nowhere a force can come at any time without warning to remove or damage whatever it is that we hold dear. The ever-present fragility of life is no longer a secret. The precarious fate of anything living is now and forever in question. And those of us who have experienced such know that, no matter the job or task, nothing else really matters now but the ramifications of this great fact.

How we make a home for this knowledge determines whether we live in terror or in awe, though nothing we can do or achieve will make us immune from realizations of either. Once in our consciousness, the terrible knowledge that life is as fragile as it is brilliant makes certainty an illusion. Our acceptance of this fact releases the urgency of living, and as the trauma of breaking subsides, the urgency of living remains, indelibly traced like an unseeable scar. Once feeling this deeply, the notion that each moment is unrepeatable and capable of being broken open at any time instills a sanctity about the simple graces of living that most awakened beings would envy. In truth, nothing else really matters.