Simon and the donkeys gave us a joyous shout-out this morning, and in it, I heard some joyous braying for the New Year, and to me, this is the call to live, the call to dream. I think dreams can come true, if you stick with them. We are discouraged from doing this. Dreams are fantasies, too expensive, not practical, not realistic in our tough and angry world. But dreams are the vitamins of the soul, the inspire us, pull us forward, give us strength.
When Simon brays, I often hear the call to dream, and to never stop dreaming. In the New Year I will dream every single day.
Maria has conjured up another streaming pillow, and she calls it “Open My Heart.” It is relevant to me, especially this week when I consider what I wish for 2012. In the last few weeks, life has been washing over me. A friend died. A friend is moving away. A friend had a baby. A dog died. I am getting some clear messages about my life, making some decisions about it. I have been doing intense spiritual work, with Mary Muncil and on my own and I am getting ever-closer to understanding what a spiritual life means and what work I need to do.
Opening my heart to new experience says it well for me. Understanding that fear and anger and judgement are choices, not the unalterable realities of life. We all feel these things, and I doubt that they ever completely go away. But they are not running my life any longer, I am, and that brings me inexpressible peace, joy and love.
When my friend died, someone we both knew came to me, and said “isn’t horrible? Can you believe it?” What I thought was, it was not horrible, it was natural. It was time. He loved a good and long and full life and was ready to go. It was where we all will go, in our time. Why is something so universal always seen through the prism of tragedy?
When my friend told me he was moving, he said he felt sad and guilty for leaving his friends behind, going to another part of the country. I will miss him, but I reminded myself to be happy for him, and share the joy of new experience. He was going to live his life, to seek new experience and that is sacred to me, and I did cry but not for sorrow, but out of gratitude that he is living his life. Godspeed. You don’t need to be sad, I said. You don’t need to be guilty. It’s a choice.
A different friend told me she wanted to move to the ocean, and I felt, at first, that she shouldn’t go. Moves can be impetuous, unrealistic. She ought to consider it, wait. Then I opened my heart and let go of selfishness and instead, said a prayer for her dreams to come true, wherever they took her.
When someone e-mailed me a message about the awful tragedy of losing Rose, I opened my heart. What a good life she had, I thought, how grateful I was able to help her leave the world in peace and dignity. It is not, to me an awful tragedy.
And what do these messages have in common as we approach a New Year? They are a template for me, footsteps on the spiritual path. The most exciting thing about my responses is that I didn’t have to really think about them, not too much. Each act of selflessness for me, long a closed, selfish and confused man, is a prayer, and an act of affirmation.
It used to be such an issue for me, there was so much fear and confusion about my health and health care. As I came to realize that health is a spiritual, not just a medical matter, it became clearer. Even though very few people in our culture would agree with me, or follow my path, it is now clear to me, not an argument but a choice. I feel so good about what I chose to do, although I conceded it was a difficult process.
Three years ago, I came to see that conventional health care was not working for me. My doctors and I seemed far apart on how I wished to live, and how I wished to die. And on elemental ideas about what health is or isn’t. I came to see the process as profoundly and visibly corrupted by lawyers, corporate pharmaceutical and health insurance companies, lobbyists, and suffocating government regulation. Mostly, doctors were urging me to take tests and receive medications for things that had not yet happened, but which they assured me could happen – heart attacks, high cholesterol, worsening diabetes, strokes, circulations problems, cancer of the colon, prostate, and many other potential illnesses. Various doctors told me I needed regular testing and medications to avoid all of these dangers and to remain sexually active and neurologically sound. If I didn’t take medications, they told me, if I was not tested regularly, then any of these things could befall me and I would suffer, be crippled, and perhaps die. This notion of testing and preventative medications seemed the core of health to them. It terrified me. I never felt comfortable about it.
At the time, I had been on medications of one kind or another for nearly 40 years – for anxiety, for sleep, for blood sugar issues, then statens to guard against high cholesterol. I began a program of reading – books on the aging process (Sherwin Nuland “How We Die”), and medical studies from schools like Stamford and Harvard on the side affects of medications and the way in which Americans age and eventually die. I became a hospice volunteer and saw some of the brave and meaningful choices people made to make sure they died well and with some control of the process.
I found meticulously researched and disturbing studies on statens and other medications – especially blood pressure, diabetes, and prostate medications. Much confusion, uncertainty, disagreement about just about every medication, and every pill. I saw a process which made healthy people frightened, and feel old and ill, from obsessions with health to endless testing and pills to senior discounts and the idea we can now live forever.
It seemed that lobbyists and pharmaceutical companies had nearly taken over congressional and government regulators and dictated what insurance companies would pay for and what doctors prescribe. My own doctor told me he no longer looks for health, but for illness, and that the system of modern medicine is about prescribing pills, not keeping people off of them. Even a cursory reading of the affects of many new “miracle” proceedures like hip and joint replacements can find a litany of horror stories, unintended consequences, and unexpected results.
Three years later, I am on no prescription medications. I see a naturopath (an M.D.) who takes blood, blood pressure, and proscribes some natural medications, I am sleeping well, I feel strong and healthy, alert and energetic, creative and productive. I went to a nutritionist for a year to learn about food and its impact on my body. I see a spiritual counselor every week to work on my soul, a massage therapist to help keep me limber and fluid. I am never afraid to see these health care practitioners. They all know me well and support my idea of health. I understand that I will eventually fall ill to something and die, and I am working to make sure that I do not end my life in a nursing home or hospital, not my choice for aging or end of life. My wife supports this idea and holds a health proxy for me.
I have learned that we need not surrender our sense of choice, control and well-being when it comes to our health. I have learned that there are many wonderful people who live to health and to promote good health and well-being. I do not argue or proselytize for this approach, and I know most people do not wish to follow it. That’s okay with me. I don’t need to pressure other people, and I don’ t seek agreement. I am grateful to the many health care practitioners who do not work for money and profit, and who not manipulate my fears and needs. I want to write more about this, as more people ask me about it than any other thing (except Simon). This is just Part One. Part Two coming over the weekend.
We scattered most of Rose’s ashes up in the pasture, kept some for this beautiful urn that Maria bought for me in Brooklyn last week. A good place for Rose. Maria says she kept the pawprint cast that came from the animal crematorium and wants to plant it in a garden next Spring. I didn’t know.
I’m glad to have some of Rose’s ashes and will keep them by my desk, where I write. I will get a lot of work done, I can promise that.
