Yesterday was a good day in the middle of a good month in what's turning into a pretty good summer. You know how it is -- moments melt into hours, into days, months and years. And as good years tend to go, it's a blur. (What day is it?) What's more, I've had few distractions and fewer demands, so nothing has slowed me down from a busy and productive schedule doing the things I love. This contrasts greatly to other years I've experienced--years of mentally fatiguing and physically demanding care taking, as well as tedious medical issues of my own. There were entire years that I was unable to gather the intellectual or creative resources to compose a coherent grocery list, never mind a publishable thesis.
2008 was such a year.
At the start of 2008, my husband and I knew we were going to move. Our children no longer lived at home and we'd grown weary of the high finance and hard labor it took to maintain the house and grounds that had been our family home for almost 20 years. We began to prepare ourselves mentally. Where would we go? How would we live? Townhouse or single family? Waterfront or mountains? Fortunate to have choices (as long as the house sold), still it was daunting. Either way, the next twelve months of our lives would revolve around sorting through the substantial and sentimental artifacts of our lives, and moving on.
Or so we thought.
Although we somehow did pull off the move that year, life intervened in such a way that the move was the least of our work. While trying to plan our future, we endured the acute critical illness of one of our children followed by unexpected surgery of my own. The same day our house went on the market, we received an offer that was rescinded two weeks later because the buyer, along with everybody else at Lehman Brothers, was fired when the market crashed. A second buyer stepped in on the condition we get rid of a half-buried oil tank. Ironically, the tank sprung a leak from the pressure test, requiring an indeterminate period of soil remediation as we all wondered if the seepage had contaminated the ground water. There's much more, but you get the point. Suffice it to say, we were ecstatic to see 2008 drag its catastrophic butt offstage and into the drama archives.
Seven years later, I have a slightly different perspective.
The thing about 2008 and years like it, is that even now I remember nearly every detail. I remember how I felt (scared). I remember what songs played relentlessly on the radio (Leona Lewis' "Bleeding Love"; Jordin Spark' "No Air"). I can still recall the anxiety that shot up my chest without warning like rockets of sulfuric acid. I remember swallowing the fear so it wouldn't converge with the fear of my husband and children, consuming us. I remember the fear, but I also remember the kindness of friends, the skill of the doctors, the generosity of the nurses, and the penetrating sense of gratitude I felt at the resolution of each crisis. How I fell to my knees and wept.
In 2008 I meditated faithfully to release the stress that clung to my core gravity like scraps of rusty metal. Stress that begged the questions: Would my child survive? (He did.) Would I? And on a lesser scale, would our house sell in the middle of a global economic crisis? What if it didn't? What if it did? Would I overcome the compounding grief of leaving the home that had sheltered my young family? Would we find another home that made us as happy? Our stress quotient was stratospheric.
Because of that, 2008 was a bookmark year.
I remember the chapters that preceded 2008 and those that followed. I remember everything that occurred with a clarity that informs how I process nearly everything that has happened to me since. I ask myself, is it as bad as 2008? No? Okay, then I can handle it in my sleep. And that makes me realize that if it were not for the bad days, life might slip away unnoticed -- a rapid succession of innocuous moments flowing into a refreshing but undifferentiated pool of time.
Kind of like now.
So am I asking for trouble? No way. Would I invite suffering upon myself? God, no. I strive to hold every moment in a chalice, sacred, and still, they slip away. But one thing I've learned is that trouble likely appears for a reason, and it pays to understand its purpose. Suffering grabs time by the ankles and slows it down, forcing us to stop, stand our ground, look around and take stock. Who are we? Why are we here? Through our loss and near-losses, we come to acknowledge the shocking miracle of our own existence.
Gurus of every nature encourage us to live life in the moment, it's true. And I've done more than one post on that subject. But there are times when living in the moment isn't enough unless we expand the moment to include its context. There are times we have to draw back, remove the telephoto and snap on the panoramic lens to evaluate the bigger picture. (Ah, so that's where I am!) Only then will the tiny incremental moments have meaning. We can seize the moment, seize the day, or seize the life we've been given. When we pull back and allow it in -- the suffering and the joy -- we seize it all. And through it, we are changed.
Wise wo/men say we can't do any of this well without faith, but what does that mean, exactly? For me, the measure of mature faith is the ability to become comfortable with not knowing if the house will sell and when; if the market will recover and when; who will survive and who won't. (Spoiler alert: no one does.) The measure of mature faith is the understanding that the adventure we're all living is larger and more complex than even the most enlightened of us could ever imagine, never mind control.
Suffering is the spiritual fuel that transforms us from the inside out, consuming our egos in the process, if we allow it. (Allow it.) Then one day, out of nowhere, a castle appears in the rear-view mirror on a high peak at the edge of a vast wilderness. From one of its many balconies one can view the panoramic sweep of a hard-earned life, well-lived. A conscious life of compassion and purpose. And suddenly it all makes sense. We turn and retrace our steps, remembering as we go: This is where I learned humility. Forgiveness. Compassion. Empathy.
This is where I found my humanity.