saudade

This is a work of fiction.

My radical non-dualist friends tell me that the feeling that arises, or remains, most intensely when the illusion of self and separation drops away, is not bliss, but rather something akin to sadness.

it’s the sense that nothing can be otherwise
than just how it apparently is —
not better (or worse),
not hopeful (or hopeless).

the dreams we have about how things might be
are smashed — with this feeling, this strange sense, that
there is no might, no maybe.

it’s not that this gives rise to some quiet, peaceful acceptance —
there is no volition, no agency, no free will.
there is no choice in this.
this is not what we were looking for.

it’s more the loss,
the end of something that was believed in,
and is seen to be no longer possible — worse,
it is seen to never have been.

in Portuguese there is an expression
saudades de te — more than just “I miss you”,
it’s deeper, more undone by what is terribly missing,
it’s about the absence, the overflowing emptiness.

how can we miss what was only a possibility,
something that, we thought, might,
some future day, fill an empty space,
or something that might have filled that space
in some nostalgic long ago invented past?

still, somehow, we can yearn (if only…!)
for what might be in some non-existent future,
or regret the loss of what might have been (if only…!)
in some non-existent past,
when all there is,
all there ever has been, or will be
is this.

but what then happens when it is seen
that there is nothing that can fill that empty space?
that there are no possibilities,
only what, always and relentlessly, just was, and is,

with no parole, no escape, ever, from this?
we don’t want this.

yet this is the feeling I feel now.

this feeling is not quite sadness,
not sorrow, nor longing, nor melancholy,
not wistfulness, nor grief,
not even the feeling of ‘missing’ something.

it’s not even just a thought, not even just an emotion —
it’s more embodied than that.
it is who we thought we were that has been lost,
though we were mistaken.
no one was ever there to be lost.

it is a deep feeling,
but not a feeling that is ‘good’ or ‘bad’ —
it brings no joy, no suffering.
it offers, and changes, nothing.

it is a feeling of emptiness, of loss,
but not at all an absence of feeling —
not depression, not indifference,
not a turning away, not an inuring,
not a resignation,
not a desensitizing or dissociation.

it defies definition, analysis, purpose, and meaning.
it respects no human conceits,
and needs no explanation.

it is a feeling for which there seems no word,
perhaps because it is not a ‘personal’ feeling at all,
not ‘my’ feeling,
not a feeling ‘about’ someone or something.

just a feeling,
solid, unshakeable
about everything.
about this.

somehow, I recognize it —
it is vaguely familiar; I have felt it before.

is this, I wonder
how the equanimity of wild creatures feels?

it seems to be growing, this strange feeling,
this emptying out of all the things
that could have, should have, might have been.

leaving only, astonishingly, wondrously, sadly
this everything.

afterword: Many learners of French, trying to understand the reflexive tense, try to translate “I miss you” literally, as “Je te manque”. But the correct translation is “Tu me manque” — literally “you are missing from me”. Likewise “Ça me manque” means “I miss it”. You aren’t doing the missing — it is.
image from Midjourney — not my prompt