Doing Nothing Versus Not Doing Something

The other day, consoling a struggling Ilana, I fought off a part of me that said, as per usual, "Do something!"

It didn't say this directly, it said it via the ideas and judgments and assessments that flooded my mind, facing the space of her sadness. They take the common critic line of things like:

-you should have done something to prevent this

-she should have done something to prevent this

-she is going to feel this way forever

-you need to get her out of this...

When, if, I follow these and more, I am "doing something". But it is often the something she does not need. She needs something, but she needs space. Warmth. Trust. Holding. Silence without recrimination, even if it is me simply judging myself.

                         🌀

Meditation is like this for me, too, like it is for so many people. Though I have plenty of personal and direct evidence with some fifteen years of sitting that it is "not doing nothing", I still believe that's the case at times.

How do I know that? Because thoughts flood my mind and I follow them pretty far before dropping them and coming back to the space of now. There's nothing wrong with that. There's nothing wrong with thoughts. But on the frequent occasions where my meditation is more focusing on thinking than letting it co-exist with space, I get evidence of how little I trust yet that meditation is in fact doing something. 

Even that practice, just seeing how much I am not trusting space, that it is something and not nothing, is worth it. I know that. No judgments here. Just curiousity about the beliefs that underlie my relationship to doing and being.

I know that it takes a lot of space to even see how I struggle with space. And still, even writing this, part of me wants to say: "Wrap it up with wisdom. Fix it."

And I refuse. I refuse to do that to you or to me. Instead I will do a something that seems like nothing: I will leave this contemplation open-ended, knowing I will return to it again and again, and hoping you will, too.

Diagnosis

Ilana on a swing at a baby shower last weekend.

UPDATE JUNE 25: it turns out she simply has basal cell and not melanoma. We are very relieved. Still, grateful for support and it's been a hard week! 

There's really no easy way to write about this. I have thought about it, cried about it.

Last week, Ilana got diagnosed with melanoma. As she said in her Facebook note about it, it wasn't as much a question of "if" she got skin cancer, but more "when" - her father has had basal and squamish cell cancers both so far in his life. But melanoma is scary - it's the most severe and though her case is "3 out of 10 in severity" the name alone keeps rattling us.


Cancer, as a word, carries a lot of weight in my family. And fear. I've been working with panic and fear all week, trying to relax enough to feel the sadness underneath. Panic and fear can drive me into depression, anxiety, and then I am not really feeling what is going on: the deep awareness of impermanence, not as a concept, but as reality.

As Ilana said in her note:

I never broke a bone despite all of my time on a skateboard. I never became dangerously ill through my childhood and early adult life. No major accidents, no long-term risky habits. Very little death in my family. I never assumed I’d live forever, but I did have a misguided idea that I’d coast along for decades and somewhere down the road just not wake up one day. Nice and easy, no struggles along the way.

This is a well-written reminder that even for a woman like me, someone who lost both of her parents and other relatives early, impermanence is still so easy to deny. Even with my experience - in comparison to hers - we are relatively on the same page. Human beings scared as shit.

The flip side - a both/and flip side, not either/or -is that we are also really treasuring each other. Savoring. When I am able to recognize the panic and dissociation, I can connect to the deep sadness underneath. And also appreciation.

Her procedure to have this tumor removed is in just over a month. They'll know more then - making sure it hasn't spread to any lymph nodes, etc, though they doubt that is the case. It's a deep tumor, all the way through the dermis, so there'll be some recovery. Then we watch and wait.

It is incredibly likely that this will NOT be what kills her.

I am reminded that, except for when we are pretending we won't die, or hoping there will be "no struggles along the way," we are all watching and waiting. Always. Cancer seems to make it more real, but the fact is either of us could go any day now, in any number of completely undiagnosable but perfectly normal ways. A car crash. A fall down the steps. Nothing so dramatic as melanoma. 

And yet. Cancer. I am trying to respect it. And turn my fear into appreciation. It is a practice. A constant one.

Living the Subtle

I have a cold right now. Just about nothing feels subtle about me: I honk when I sneeze or blow, cough constantly, and my voice has dropped an octave, instantly declaring me sick to all I dare speak to. And yet, so many subtle things have been happening recently.

Under-the-surface, mid-sea changes that bring strong waves to the shore. Those waves I have yet to see, but I am learning to feel and trust what is happening deep underneath will have its own effects.

What do I mean?

Dylan and I "celebrated" our sixth wedding anniversary on August 15th. I put the verb in quotes because, in fact, we spent a good chunk of the day crying. Struggling through wants and needs, accusations and defenses, we were able to rest holding hands at the end of the day. But it was not pretty arriving there, and for days - weeks - after, I contemplated the ultimate, not subtle thing:

I thought about leaving her.  In a short period of time, she also considered the same about me.

End of In No Sense

Is this the end of innocence? Or the end of confusion? 

The end of delusion or the end of illusion?

What is innocence, anyway? In-no-sense. In no sense did I understand what marriage entails. And in no sense is it a problem. And yet. And yet. In some sense I thought I knew. That’s innocence – thinking we know? Or is that arrogance? Innocence is not even knowing there’s something to think or know about.

I would not prefer innocence. That Buddhist adage – don’t start and if you do start, get it over with quickly. Yeh. And yet, when I do slow down and realize what is really going on, I am so grateful that I have developed skills to notice. That I know something now, things I didn’t even realize one could know, then. When I was innocent.

Reference Pointlessness

Ultimately, Buddhist teachings tell us there are no reference points. This is actually what the teaching on Emptiness means, if I may be so bold as to give it reference points - not that nothing has meaning or heart (quite the opposite) but that in order to experience ourselves and the world fully, we need to drop/empty out our cache of reference points - like/dislike, me/not me. I find this especially salient in communication, and, of course, there are formal training programs in Compassionate Communication,  Non-Violent Communication and Green Light Conversations. I have talked about this before in my previous posts on listening (recently re-published in the journal Medical Encounters) and speaking, but today I was struck especially by how deep these misunderstandings go.

Beneath

"I am sorry I was so cranky earlier, sweetie."

Dylan hugs me and kisses the crook of my neck.
"That's ok. I mean, thank you but I understand."
And a tiny voice inside says "No, it's not ok." (This is common  - I can never apologize enough)
But then the tiny voice says "It's not ok that you are cranky with me." (Not common)

That tiny voice isn't talking to Dylan.
That tiny voice is me, talking to me.

Innocent Misunderstandings

Marriage, plus two thought-provoking blog posts thoroughly unrelated to each other, have me thinking about what it means to mis/understand, especially: When is it innocent?

A couple of nights ago, I started what seemed to me to be an innocent and quick discussion.

"We need to get this Air Conditioning thing figured out," I said. What did I mean by that? At first I truly thought I meant "we," but later, Dylan pointed out that I actually meant "you." So the innocent misunderstanding (or not so innocent?) started within myself, as some kind of crossed wires or self-deception.


Of course, I don't have to tell anyone who's been in a long-term relationship what happens next. All kinds of underlying goop, crap that's been free-floating, and our relationship is (luckily) free of a lot of this kind of stuff.