Huh?

Was having lunch with my sister and niece a couple weeks ago, and suddenly I said I was thinking of going back to school. I think I was as surprised as my lunch companions.

For many years I have been encouraging/suggesting that my oldest son might want to seek a career in something that involved people, given the outgoing and friendly guy he can so often be. (During his teens this side of him is directed mostly to his peers - parents, teachers, and other grownups will often miss it.) A legal career (which would also make use of his considerable bargaining and argumentative skills), a career in psychiatry or psychology, political science, history, anthropology, or social work. The length of schooling and depth of commitment (read: high school transcripts) required for each of these kind of follows a slowly downward path, and reflects his gradual loss of interest in, and success at academics. Nevertheless, though 'father knows best' what his children ought to pursue career-wise (his younger brothers have also been hearing what they would do best at), my encouragement has been all but ignored.

However, turns out that somebody was listening: me! I'm thinking of pursuing a second career in social work, possibly specializing in grief counseling. I am looking for a nearby volunteer opportunity, a chance to see counseling in action, dip my toes in the water, so to speak. I just printed out a volunteer application form for the Wendt Center ("For Loss and Healing"), a non-profit located in northwest D.C. I took the boys there a couple times on the suggestion of a friend a few years back. They would also like to see a resumé. Time to dust an old one off, and add my longest job of all: fifteen years keeping my kids from killing each other, or themselves, 24/7.

Then again, maybe I could become a neurology researcher and figure this MS riddle out once and for all. Or, perhaps anthropology would be more my cup of tea.

Wait, need to focus for a bit, one thing at a time...

Dancing boulders

Sisyphus is cursed to push that big heavy boulder up the hill, though it keeps rolling back...

Seems that my curse - when I choose to accept it - is to try to slow the boulder's seemingly inevitable roll down the hill. As I keep hoping that it reaches the valley floor. But just as the sisyphian story can help us each to see the myth of relentless struggle and stress in our lives - that is, to give us the opportunity to pause a moment and see that there is no boulder - so too my struggles to keep the boulder from rolling away from me: can I pause and notice there is no boulder?

How do I meet each moment, each sadness, joy, or challenge? Do I make it as solid and resistant to rolling as a huge heavy boulder? Or turn the joys and happinesses into something like hot air balloons that I struggle to keep from floating away in the wind?It is these struggles to make the bad go away, or keep the good, that get in the way of just being with them when they are present to me.

The past couple days when doing my physical therapy, a line from my new and improved nightly MS metta (Buddhist prayer) meditation comes to me. I say 'new and improved' since I've edited it a bit. There were too many 'all sentient beings' and other such stock phrases, when I actually meant 'everybody,' for instance. But I added a new line, it goes like this: 'May I engage in daily physical therapy and exercise with a heart open to the beauty and perfection of the universe – and of this ailing body.' I read the prayer (covered in an earlier blog entry titled 'Both Sides Now') each night before turning out the light. I first tried it after turning out the light, but that didn't seem to work so well... But seriously, though much of the words are pro forma and obvious, they seem to bear repeating, even as solipsistic as the exercise might sound. The subconscious seems to work on them, and when I go about my day, they visit me on occasion.

Such as when I'm doing the balance movements of my P.T. session. Feet together, I look first straight up at the ceiling, then back down at my feet; then over my left and right shoulders. Then shake my head from side to side three times, and nod up and down three more - and since traveling to Nepal, nod also three times in the fashion common in the former Himalayan kingdom. (Also quite common in India, this nod is sort of a tilting of the head from side to side - imagine your nose as a pivot - a smile on your face. And these motions can throw off my balance centers in the vestibular glands of the inner ear, which is the point - to try to right your balance in spite of the feeling of losing it.) The phrase 'perfection in the universe - right here in this ailing body' is somehow very powerful. The P.T. becomes mysteriously lighter, less like a boulder, and more like a dance with life. Or life dancing through me.

Speaking of which, toward the end of the P.T. I will dance four or seven swing steps in a circle, then two or three lindy hops. I haven't been to the nearby swing dances - it's been too hot - but the weather has changed rather suddenly. And my girlfriend recently suggested we go back, so we will!

May your boulders melt into lindy hops...or lolly pops!

p.s. Happy Birthday to my hero, Gandhi!