“You do not need to know precisely what is happening, or exactly where it is all going. What you need is to recognize the possibilities and challenges offered by the present moment, and to embrace them with courage, faith, and hope.“ Thomas Merton
Some years ago when I was at a meditation retreat, the teacher said that mindfulness can help us to rest in not knowing. Embracing or resting in uncertainty is not something that anyone does easily. During the past two years I have been challenged with uncertainty about my mortality. I have had regular CT scans to let the doctor know the state of my aorta (was it healing or still in process), and I have had two very delicate laparoscopic surgeries in which stents were placed inside my aorta to stabilize it.
Last year I read Between Two Kingdoms by Suleika Jaouad who describes a four year battle with an aggressive leukemia which hit her just after she graduated from college. She spent much of the next four years in and out of hospitals for chemotherapy and surgeries. Finally the moment came where the doctors told her she was cured, though the leukemia could come back. However, she soon came to realize that hearing that you're cured "is not where the work of healing ends; it’s where it begins."
I remember identifying with her story. Just over a year ago my surgeon told me the words that I had been longing to hear: "no longer is blood flowing in your aorta where it's not supposed to be flowing." In other words, I could get on with my life. Well, sort of. The heavy medications that were keeping my heart rate and blood pressure low were also keeping me exhausted. My new cardiologist reduced those meditations this past summer, and six weeks later I felt a surge of new energy. So my moment of "I can get on with my life" began four months ago when most of my energy came back.
Before the dissection I was happily engaged in many projects in my quest to make the world a better place. I was on the Board of three organizations, leading a monthly Civil Conversations group, teaching meditation every week at the County Jail, working on several projects with homelessness and restorative justice, writing this blog, leading a weekly meditation group, and teaching occasional 8-week courses. All in all, I had over 16 things going on. Now I can't imagine doing that many things and yet I was doing it and loving it. At this point I’m devoting about 1/3 as much time and energy on various projects as before.
Recent feedback from my wife and two children has helped me to realize that psychologically I have not been doing as well as I had thought in terms of addressing the grief and post-traumatic stress of the dissection, the uncertainty about what I do want to do with my life, and the greater sense of uncertainty about how long I might live.
While Suleika went on a cross country trip to explore how she wanted to devote her time and energy, I realize as I write this that I want to engage again with the four questions in Wayne Muller's wonderful book How Then Shall We Live?:
Who am I?
What do I love?
How shall I live, knowing I will die?
What is my gift to the family of the earth?
In her article Deepening Our Comfort with Uncertainty, Kristi Nelson unpacks this challenge of embracing uncertainty so beautifully. The first paragraph caught me right away: "I used to put myself to sleep by repeatedly reciting a little mantra that helped me transition from active days to hopes for a calm mind at night: 'There is nothing to do, nowhere to go, nothing to know.' Guiding myself into greater comfort with not knowing was always helpful in reassuring my mind that it could truly rest and take a break from trying to plan and figure everything out." You can read the whole article at https://grateful.org/resource/deepening-comfort-with-uncertainty.