It seems as if every slice of sweet is being served with a generous dollop of bitter, lately. They say the recession is likely over but healthcare reform appears dead in the water. The violent crime rate has dropped but we're killing each other by driving while texting, now.

The bitter always follows the sweet.

Yesterday I awoke with a smile on my face. It's been a long, tough summer but autumn beckons and promises new hope and adventure. And the new fella I’m seeing is so sweet and polite that he not only opens the car door for me, he tucks me into my seat with a kiss. Feeling good, I stretched, fed the dog, brewed the java and checked my email. The name of my high school sweetheart was in the subject line but the sender was a mutual friend so I knew exactly what the message would be: Sam died early yesterday morning. His wife held his hand as he passed.

I’ve know about Sam’s brain tumor for a year and so this was not unexpected but I was surprised to find that I felt nothing. Or rather, I felt as if I’d swallowed a hairball; my throat and eyes were dry. Emotionally, I felt blank. All day. Until yoga class.

I teach yoga, lecture and provide therapy at a place where people go to heal. This week there is an adorable gay couple staying with us. (Let’s call them David and Patrick.) They’ve visited us before but this trip is different; David had a sudden heart-attack a few months ago and it threw them both for a major loop. They are only in their mid-40s and very fit and healthy, so it came as a complete shock and they are coping with the trauma and recovery with a lot of care and tenderness. Yesterday David and Patrick came into my restorative yoga class, along with around 5 other students. I stretched them out gently and folded and unfolded them into a few different postures, while guiding them in meditation. At the end I covered everyone in blankets, covered their eyes with little silk pillows and guided them to honor something in their lives for which they felt grateful. I turned my back to put something away and as I turned around Patrick and David reached out for each other-- silently, without looking-- and held hands.

That did it.

The floodgates opened and I silently wept for my poor sweet Sam and for his wife and kids. I wept with sadness for his 8 year old son, who is now angry at God and for his 37 year old wife, who now must parent alone and for my own sense of gratitude for knowing and loving Sam and for having nothing but happy memories of him. I wept for David and Patrick and for how honored I felt to bear witness to their devotion to each other and for how hard their struggles have surely been. And I wept for the whole bloody humanity of it all. What a mess we are! How we struggle to live a life with purpose and to perfect our love for each other! How we struggle to be loved and to finally let go.

Sometimes I feel like my heart is going to explode because I feel so much.

With all of their faults and flaws, people can be hard to love. But they’re harder not to. Some people hold onto love and keep it as something precious and rare and only parcel it out on rare occasions; dusting it off and bringing it out like the good china at Christmas. I ain't one of those people. Love is my everyday dish.

In yoga we sit in a circle. This has great significance for in a circle, all points are equal. The circle is the form of nature. In nature, all things move in cycles. There are seasons, day and night, life and death, darkness moving into light and returning to dark again. To hold onto any point on the circle is to lose our original nature because there is no place we begin and nowhere we end.

And to deny the bitter is to never savor the sweet. If I had all the answers then I would have no mystery. I'm sad but I'm happy to be sad and I really wouldn't have it any other way.

As if I had a choice.