When you quiet your mind, you can enter a world of clarity, peace and understanding.
~ Alice Coltrane ~
News of madness and horror in every facet of human life invades my consciousness, too often aided and abetted by my own failure to block access. My desire to achieve a sense of peace and contentment is rarely met. I cannot seem to empty my mind of troubling thoughts and visions of physical and emotional violence done to undeserving victims by merciless demons in human form. The very idea that I would desire serenity for myself, while knowing that others suffer excruciating torment, seems shameful. But I try to exculpate myself by telling myself I can do nothing to alleviate the torture unless I can focus my attention outside my own experience. That attempt usually fails; simply adds to the sense of guilt. Yet allowing one’s own mind to be scrambled by the surrounding chaos virtually assures incompetence. I suspect that only by freeing one’s head of distractions—both positive and negative—can a person realistically expect to achieve any clarity about what an individual can do to solve difficult problems. For that reason, I often think about embracing meditation; but rarely do anything consequential in response. When I commit to the focus required of successful meditation (focus may seem contrary to the concept, but it is not…in my mind), I sometimes enjoy brief periods of relief. But my commitment invariably is shattered by my own self-intrusive thoughts. Perhaps I allow myself to be “bullied” by schedules over which I think I have little control: doctor visits, tests, procedures, competing events or commitments, etc. In reality, though, I do have sufficient control over my schedules to carve out time to devote exclusively to solo meditation. It’s simply a matter of discipline and true commitment. I could, for example, exchange my early morning blogging for an early morning meditation practice. Real commitment. That’s all it would take. Now, do I have the mental strength to require that of myself?
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On rare occasions, I am asked about my process of writing. I cannot claim I have a “process.” Some days, I sit at my computer and just give my fingers the freedom to do what they seem to want; it’s almost like my mind has already made up what it wishes to allow my fingers to do. Other days, I stare at the blank screen for a long time, hoping that one of a thousand thoughts in my head commands my focused attention. Still others, I write a sentence or two about something, then move on and write a bit about something else; then do it all again…several times—only then do I expand a bit on one of more of those sentences. Were I a true author—a writer who craves his work to be published and read—I would develop a writing process of my own. A style that would help mold my writing into cohesive literature readily identifiable as a product of my unique mind. I used to dream of becoming an author, but that shiny object has lost its luster in the face of knowledge that authors are not special, they’re just a little different. I wanted to be special, I guess. Now, I just want to express what’s going on in my mind, even if that means coaxing uncooperative sentences and meaningless drivel in paragraph form from a place of emptiness.
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After a delightful early dinner with a friend—who delivered the meal—my energy faded quickly. Once again, I was in bed around 7:30, but sleep did not come for quite some time. When finally it arrived, it stayed only briefly before I was wide awake, but too tired to get up. Eventually, I got back to sleep in hour-long segments until around 4:30, just half an hour before I started writing this post. I sense a long, mentally demanding day on the horizon; one that requires me to be awake, but one that could be much more appealing if I could be asleep.
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Cancer is just part of my experience. It does not, has not, nor will it ever, define me. But the response to my experience may give the appearance that it defines me. Much of what I have written during the past year (and then some) has dealt with the recurrence of my cancer and the treatments I have undergone (and am undergoing) in efforts to control it. From my perspective, cancer is just a big, unpleasant obstacle to allowing me to continue along the path of self-definition. That may be a strange idea…that a person as old as I still hasn’t finished the process of defining himself. It probably is not as strange as many might think, though. I think some people (maybe many people) reach a point—in middle age, perhaps—at which they unwittingly decide “I’m done…this is who I am.” Later, though, they look at who they earlier thought was an end-product and realize the process remains incomplete. They may look back years—or just months or weeks—and slowly come to the conclusion that more growth and change has long been in store. Now, they consider, the time left to cultivate that development is getting short. So they embark, knowingly or not, on a journey to make up for lost time. What they are trying to achieve is hard to articulate, but I suspect it is different for everyone. It could be building or leaving a legacy of personality, a “mark on the world,” or a hundred other things. Whatever it is, it is different from (and better than), what they had thought was finished. And, of course, they may not know…not really…what it is they hope to achieve. Just…something unique and notable. I wonder how many succeed in identifying and then attaining that goal?
