I’m not much of a reader of blogs so when my webmaster asks me repeatedly to write a blog that she can post on my website I just really don’t know where to go with that. I hear myself speaking with patients about wonderful things that could perhaps help their journey to more healthful living and I write some notes to myself occasionally in hopes of turning it into a blog one of these days. Over the last year I’ve made many changes in my approach to my own lifestyle and healthful options.
In the fall of 2010 I joined a game called Health Month. On this website I can make monthly rules for myself and try to keep them for a whole month and see how it feels to for instance: “Eat Raw Fruit,” 3x or 5x or 7x a week. Or maybe: “Floss your teeth;” “Walk Your Dog;” “Go on a Friend Date.” You get the idea. There are hundreds of rules to choose from.
One rule I choose in October of 2010 continues to be on my rules list all these months later. That rule reads: ” List things you are Grateful for everyday.” An attitude of gratitude has become important to me over the months. I’m grateful to Health Month for the daily reminder to make this healthy choice.
This weekend I ran across a little story I wrote about Gratitude in 2004. I’d like to share that with you here.
I lie awake into the dark morning hours. My bed occupies most of the 6X10 room. I have long since turned off the lamp on the table beside the small window. The third and last night of the silent retreat inches past my wide open eyes, as my right hip alternates between achy and just plain painful. I cannot get to sleep. No amount of breath or technique stops the pain or the over load of thought after thought after thought.
Yes, “pain is inevitable, suffering is optional.”
No, I am not amused.
What have I done to deserve this?
What kind of question is that?
I’m in pain. It’s not fair!
Now I’m cold, too.
This blanket does not do the job. I should have remembered to bring my own.
There’s another one on top of the shelf.
That means I have to get up. Too cold to get up.
Well, you have to get up to go to the bathroom, anyway.
No. I won’t go.
The walk down the hall could help the hip pain.
No! Nothing will help the hip pain. Nothing!
I’M COLD
I HURT.
I HAVE TO PEE.
I HURT.
I CAN’T SLEEP!!
And so forth…
The dorm is as quiet as, well, as the meditation hall.
In the deafening silence, I begin to listen, really listen to my thoughts. I hear myself whining and pitying myself. I am stuck. Fat lot of good all this meditation has done me.
ENOUGH!
I ask myself:
Just how uncomfortable are you? I mean—relatively speaking…Say on a scale of one to ten? How bad does your hip hurt? How about when you take into consideration all the people who are on the planet, in darkness, asleep or awake, at home or some where else, in hospitals or war zones?
Go ahead. Put it into perspective. How cold are you? And using the same criteria—how safe?
You’re in Marine County for God’s sake! You have a dorm room to yourself at Spirit Rock. Hot and cold running water sits a mere two feet from your feet. You can have light with a flick of the switch, should you need or want it.
These thoughts begin to loosen me up a little. I feel ever-so-slightly less stuck.
I continue to count my blessings:
I tell myself the story that my hip hurts because of sitting meditation.
Then I ask myself to consider the people who could be suffering with pain because they were splitting rock all day, or walking though a mountainous country to escape political injustice, or grieving the loss of a loved one, or recovering from surgery or childbirth, or giving birth in this moment…the list is endless. I let my imagination roam the planet, (careful to stay on the dark side), and I embrace each situation with my breath. I breathe into and out of the pain and confusion of people in many countries, two hemispheres, and several bodies of water.
I give thanks for my own warm, safe, healthy, mobile body—gratitude for the ability to feel. Yes, even pain is a blessing, a message from a healthy body.
I realize that I must be in the high ninetieth percentile of comfort, when seen from a planetary viewpoint.
I continue this train of thought as I get up, walk down the hall to relieve myself, wash my hands and face in warm water, grab the extra blanket, place my head on the cervical pillow which I did remember to bring, (blessing abound!) and begin to fall gratefully to sleep.
