I didn’t understand what he meant when I first heard John Lennon sing, “No one can harm you. Feel your own pain.” But I knew his words were true, just as a sudden change in the weather is true, just as the alarm clock with its shrill ring is true.
At the time, I wasn’t accustomed to letting myself feel much of anything. The idea that we’re all wounded, and spend much of our lives denying it, was an abstraction to me — a “meaningful idea,” not a lived awareness. But I’ve changed, and through the changes Lennon’s words have been a kind of koan for me, simple yet perplexing, no less a riddle than my own heart. They speak poignantly to my stunning forgetfulness, my odd amnesia about my emotional life, reminding me that every time I deny my woundedness, I deny myself.
