Surrender

Time keeps on slippin’, slippin’, slippin’
Into the future (Steve Miller, 1976)

In the introduction to his book Wherever You Go, There You Are, Jon Kabat-Zinn observes (and then asks), “whatever you wind up doing, that’s what you’ve wound up doing. Whatever you’re thinking right now, that’s what’s on your mind. Whatever has happened to you, it has already happened. The important question is, how are you going to handle it? In other words, ‘Now what?’”

These questions have been much on my mind lately, as I find myself not having escaped, the least little bit, the chaotic, unstable nature of my existence. In 2004, after a job loss, I moved 120 miles to the north and spent two years in yet another organization rife with turbulence. Then, this year, I moved 180 miles south and find myself in an even bigger predicament. What the heck is going on? I have wondered if it’s more than just the fiscally-challenged and politically-unpredictable environment of Oregon higher education; maybe it’s me?

In any event, here I am. One life challenge after another continues to appear, and I have to, everyday, figure out, “now what?”

I have written earlier about how to cope with life in an addictive organization. And I’ve suggested that the Four-Fold Way (namely, Be Present, Pay Attention, Tell the Truth, and Be Open to Outcome) provides a good set of guidelines to follow in managing the emotional minefield of a truly unhealthy workplace. As I continue to attempt to apply these principles to my day-to-day existence, I find life to be (still!) a never-ending challenge.

I continue to be present for, and pay attention to, the people who seek me out and want to talk about their struggles. I speak my own truth, privately and publicly. And, though mindful of the risk, I do my absolute best to maintain my integrity. I guess the most difficult Way of the four-fold, is that of surrender. I am thinking that since I have not let go of outcome (that is, I have not really surrendered to the forces of the universe), I continue to struggle mightily. My body is a mass of stress symptoms, tight as a knot because I am unable to let go. My mind can say, “surrender, Jim,” but, undeniably, there is some large and finite part of me that doesn’t know how.

If I could let go, I could relax. If I could relax, I could ease these symptoms. If I could ease these symptoms, I could let go. Round and round I go, where I stop, I still don’t know…

Stress-Related Stuff

First to consider, I suppose, is the age-old question: the chicken or the egg: which came first? An interesting intellectual exercise, no doubt, but isn’t the energy expended in trying to decipher this dilemma rather futilely spent?

How about if we let folks with more time on their hands tinker around with this particular debate, ok?

Next up: Nick Hornby asks, in his thought-provoking novel High Fidelity, when considering some of his favorite songs (“Only Love Can Break Your Heart,” “When Love Breaks Down,” “How Can You Mend a Broken Heart,” “I Just Don’t Know What to Do With Myself,” etc.): “[w]hat came first—the music or the misery? Did I listen to music because I was miserable? Or was I miserable because I listened to music? Do all those records turn you into a melancholy person?” (pp. 24-25)

Again, more of life’s great questions that I think I’ll leave to the pundits and amateur therapists & philosophers out there who focus on our popular culture.

All of this is just a weak lead-in to where I’m really going with this self-reflective, self-indulgent discourse today: my own questions about chronic pain and depression. In a 2003 Stanford University study, not surprisingly, the correlation between chronic pain and depression was found to be quite high: sufferers of one likely needed treatment for both. “The question now is which comes first: the depression or the pain,” they asked. Of course, I think it likely works both ways. For example, just as depression is common among individuals who suffer from lower-back pain, it also appears to be true that depressed individuals can develop lower-back pain.

In my case, I have lived rather my entire life wondering about such issues. After approximately 40 years of chronic physical pain (beginning in my early 20s), the downturns to my physical self are quite typically mirrored in a mood decline. And, then again, when an outside entity or event exerts a change to my emotional well-being, my body almost always follows. The peaks and valleys for my affective state completely parallel my physical ups and downs.

In sum, this serves to remind me that I need to revisit a book I started a little while back, and then subsequently got sidetracked from…Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers: The Acclaimed Guide to Stress, Stress-Related Diseases, and Coping. It’s a rather large and scary tome, but valuable information is contained therein, nonetheless. I need more of what’s in there, I think.

Prime Time Wisdom

The popular TV show Grey’s Anatomy is filmed in Seattle, and maybe its Pacific Northwest roots are part of the appeal for me. (This season the show made a move to 9:00 p.m. on Thursdays, so it is on ABC an hour before ER airs at 10:00 p.m. on NBC; I tape them both and watch them on the weekend). Aside from its obvious (and frequent) quirkiness, the show has real and touching moments that occasionally tend to unearth some truths about life and relationships.
 
Last Thursday’s Sometimes a Fantasy really caught my attention. Most episodes are filled with several different story lines, with some, not uncommonly, continuing from week-to-week. And the story of Izzie’s loss resumed this time. She had fallen in love with a heart-transplant patient who had asked her to marry him. However, shortly after he popped the question (and after Izzie had made an ethically-questionable call about his care), he died. Izzie’s story was juxtaposed with one about Megan, a young girl who came to the emergency room with multiple injuries. Although she was bruised, beaten, scarred and had stapled a wound on her arm with an office stapler, she claimed to feel no pain. The ultimate diagnosis for her was “chronic insensitivity to pain.” (Who knew there was such a thing!?)

So, he we had: Megan, dramatically physically damaged, who claimed to “feel no pain.” And Izzie, who stood immobilized outside the hospital, unable to motivate herself to return to work, when asked where it hurt, said “everywhere .”

The array of possible human experiences always tends to amaze me. In this dramatization, one person feels immense, debilitating, chronic, paralyzing pain, and the other, none at all.

During the operation on Megan, the surgeon observes that “everybody wants a life without pain. What does it get you? She needs to be on a poster somewhere to remind people that pain’s there for a reason.”

I know, I know. This is a TV show. But the writing this week seemed incredibly good…and provided a degree of wisdom than one typically does not encounter during prime time.

Of course, these observations extend my previous commentaries. You know that I think about pain a lot ; and an episode of a medical drama focusing on the topic is bound to attract my attention and dwell in my thoughts. Six days ago, in an attempt to address my chronic myofascial pain issues (including my long-standing chronic lower-back pain), I allowed a doctor to inject me 19 times with small amounts of Marcaine in my first major attempt at trigger-point injection therapy. Although I experienced some short-term relief that day, by the evening I was back to “normal.” And, as my back pain has been the predominant factor in my existence the last couple weeks, I drove to Eugene to see my chiropractor on Friday.

If “pain’s there for a reason,” I ask, “what is it ?”

I struggle with this question.

Lasting Security

My colleague Wendall died swiftly of a heart-attack on Thursday evening. A co-worker was able to drive him from campus to the emergency room during the crisis (it’s just down the street), but they were apparently able to do little for him. He was one day short of his 56th birthday, and leaves behind a wife, kids, grandkids, and a large number of stunned colleagues in his department and on the entire campus.

I worked with Wendall for nearly two years. When I accepted this interim job in 2004, I was slated initially to take over the supervision of the Science Division, but by the time I actually got to campus, the president had reorganized things a bit and I found myself leading the “Science & Technology Division.” The technology portion included the Industrial Technology Department (consisting of the Automotive, Machine Tool, and Welding Technologies), of which Wendall was the department chair.

Wendall was a weldor and welding instructor; from my perspective he loved his trade and he had a deep and abiding affection for his students. He was exceptionally dedicated to the mission of the Industrial Technology department, and worked long hours to make sure everything was moving along as it should. Most importantly he was, simply, a very decent human being.

I will miss him.

This event seems to be triggering, for me, overwhelming feelings of loss. Even though I know that loss is integral to our existence, I still am sad. Despite the length of time I’ve lived and how much I’ve learned, I guess I’ve never been able to accept the impermanent nature of the universe. One would think that, by now, I would know that any relationship is temporary. To begin a relationship with anyone, with anything, is to know that it will someday end.

This loss, taken with my other large losses in the last couple years, is serving to keep me, I believe, in a rather deep and prolonged melancholic state. I apparently cling to some kind of ideal that I can, at some point, “get it together.” It’s likely my perfectionist tendencies, and my sense of what’s “fair,” that lead to disappointment and my sense of loss and failure. And, I suppose it’s what keeps me “stuck” in whatever uncomfortable place this is that I am in.

“To think that we can finally get it all together is unrealistic. To seek for some lasting security is futile…Suffering begins to dissolve when we can question the belief or the hope that there is anywhere to hide.

Hopelessness means that we no longer have the spirit for holding our trip together…Trying to get lasting security teaches us a lot, because if we never try to do it, we never notice that it can’t be done.” (Pema Chödrön, When Things Fall Apart, p. 39)

Transition

Currently I’m reading a couple of books that seem, in part, to mirror my life circumstances.

The first I’m actually revisiting. I read it shortly after it came out, during a difficult period for me in 1998. It’s by Pema Chödrön and called When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times. The second is a newly-released book by Eugene O’Kelly entitled Chasing Daylight: How My Forthcoming Death Transformed My Life.

Given that I’m in a period of major transition now, and have been for quite some time, these selections seem particularly appropriate. Since I’ve picked these two up in the last few days, I’m feeling a tad more peaceful.

With the Chödrön book particularly, there is pearl after pearl. I’m keeping my highlighter handy as I go. In just the second chapter, I have rediscovered the words

“Life is a good teacher and a good friend. Things are always in transition…[t]o stay with that shakiness—to stay with a broken heart, with a rumbling stomach, with the feeling of hopelessness and wanting to get revenge—that is the path of true awakening. Sticking with that uncertainty, getting the knack of relaxing in the midst of chaos, learning not to panic—this is the spiritual path.” (Pema Chödrön, When Things Fall Apart, p. 10)