The Stress of Getting Better

An unexpected Election Day victory.

This amazing thing happened to me on Election Day. I was having an Alexander Technique lesson with a mentor teacher and, during those 45 minutes, a pain went away in my knees that has been off and on for at least 10 years. She diagnosed it, taught me how to massage around the patella, and helped me with Alexander Technique thinking. Wham! Bam.

I was delighted, ready to jitterbug again. It was amazing but also disconcerting. If this decades-long issue was resolved so easily, what other burdens and struggles are closer to resolution than I imagined? What else is close to being gone?

And how much of my identity is settled around certain beliefs – this is how I am and how I will be?

Thirteen years ago, I resisted the possibility that I might have a chronic illness or lasting disability. (This is unrelated to the above-mentioned knee issue.) I struggled against the symptoms; I hated the uncertainty; I frantically sought remedies and answers from nearly thirty healthcare providers. But eventually, like a toddler wearing himself out before sleep, I paused my freak-out and let the eventuality take me over. I began to operate as if this is the way things are and the way they are going to be.

For instance, I wouldn’t be able to type. Not more than a word or two. Employment would be severely impacted. Finances would take a hit. Much of my conscious living would require efforts or, at least, awareness of how to stay healthy.

But these past several months –I hesitate to write it down in case some vindictive deity is reading – my health has been improving steadily.

I’m so relieved and excited, but also overwhelmed. Just as I once found it overwhelming to imagine my life with such reduced options because of my health, I now find it strangely unsettling to have wider choices in the future. There’s a part of me that doesn’t want to face the possibility that things could radically change again.

You’ll rarely hear it from someone with chronic pain or disability but, after a while, I appreciated that illness and pain had pushed me towards a narrower path. If not for this turn of events, I would’ve thrown myself frantically and ceaselessly after success, social approval, and predictability. I would’ve tried to fill an un-fillable hole.

Instead, the intensity and prolonged nature of my disappointments pointed me toward a more practice-oriented life. As Zen teacher Charlotte Joko Beck wrote,

“Everything in our life that disappoints us is a kind friend. And we are all being disappointed in some way or other. If we’re not disappointed, we never wear out our desire to think and reestablish ourself at the top of the heap with victory. Nobody wins in the end; nobody’s going to survive. But that’s still our drive, our system. It can only be worn out by years of sitting and by life…”

Thanks to Jeff Rubin and Unconditional Healing, I began to see my situation in a different way. Like someone on an extended meditation retreat who is handed a schedule not of their choosing, I had to make a relationship with what was arising in my life. I couldn’t endlessly shop for something better. I didn’t have the money, time, or physical ability to “upgrade” my different situation.

So I became more of an involved father than I otherwise might have been. I also became less bound by where I had expected to go.

Charlotte Joko Beck again: “Life is a series of endless disappointments, and it’s wonderful just because it doesn’t give us what we want. To go down this path takes courage, many people in this lifetime will not do it. We are all at different places on the path, which is fine. Only a very few who are enormously persistent and who take everything in life as an opportunity, and not as an insult, will finally understand.”

The strange thing is that in terms of my recent healing, life is giving me what I want. It’s just not what I expected.