The Gift of Pain, part two
(Part one is here)
My zen teacher Junpo Dennis Kelly often says “the pain is inevitable, but the suffering is optional”. This insight has had a profound impact on me.
My thinking mind, which may also be called my ego, is an extremely powerful entity.
It allows me to take care of myself, to function as an independent person, to solve all kinds of problems, and to perform many other critical functions. When we are babies we are as helpless and incompetent as we are innocent because our ego has not yet developed.
A major part of my ego is devoted to stories, to putting incidents, objects, and experiences into context so I can make sense of them. These stories are rich and complex, and take on incredible power over time, to such an extent that I may actually forget that that they are mind-creations.
When my back started to hurt, my ego/story-generator went into overdrive. I was so confused. I had never experienced this kind of discomfort and disability before.
Quite the opposite. After a pudgy and uncoordinated childhood, in eighth grade I began to develop into a strong athlete. I was a competitive swimmer and served as a co-captain. At the State Meet senior year, I swam the backstroke leg of our Medley Relay. We ranked 6th in the state, 16th in the country, and won Prep-School All American recognition.
When I was home last year we cleaned out the furnace room and I found all my swimming bling.
I also played football, and won Most Improved my senior year after we advanced to the Regional Semi-Finals.
As an adult, I did triathlons, climbed mountains, did yoga, got a black belt in jujutsu, skied and snowboarded, and so on and so on. I loved my body, it was so powerful and versatile! I was so grateful for it!
My identity as a man was built upon my strength and vigor and competitive spirit, and my ability to use my body athletically to do a lot of things. Indeed, in retrospect, my story of myself featured me as a Human Do-ing, rather than as a Human Be-ing. My value as a person was strictly a product of all the things I could undertake and master.
And then my back went out.
Within months, I found myself unable to do jujutsu, or ride a bike, or run, or really, do anything physical at all. I could barely walk at times, and I found just sitting at my desk to be painful.
Even the process of waking up and getting out of bed in the morning was harrowing. As soon as I woke, I would move slightly to see what kind of day it would be, and only then I would gently push myself up, and take a few ginger steps.
The physical discomfort was awful, but the story I developed to understand it was even more excruciating. I began to believe that I was old, that I was useless, and that I was on the downhill side of life.
In some fundamental way, I started to believe I was no longer a man. Instead, I thought I was some kind of eunuch (and to veer into the TMI zone, sex was very uncomfortable too.)
The most crushing blow however was when I found myself unable to wrestle with my 9 year old son Enzo. We had always loved to roughhouse and play on the floor. One day, he jumped on me and I gasped with pain. I told him I couldn’t grapple with him because my back hurt. He looked at me for a long time, and then said with a tinge of bitterness and rejection “You can’t do anything anymore Daddy.” I think that was the saddest moment in my life.
I started to hate my body. I mused on facebook about my “meat suit”, a tool that I had used so well that had now become obsolete and broken. I read articles about the trans-humanist movement, and seriously thought I might be better off with a cyborg body and a disembodied brain.
I became sadder and sadder, and then quite depressed, which was where the booze and ibuprofen really kicked in. However, though I often found some small respite from my self-defeating story of “loss of manhood” by getting buzzed, in the morning I only felt worse. Not surprisingly, it didn’t help my back one bit either. I kidded myself that I was “relaxing”, when really I was hiding.
That was when I started meditating. By slowing down my life and sitting still, I was finally able to notice what was going on in my body, and in my head. I realized the ways in which I was hurting myself, by pushing things too hard, and expecting too much.
That was when it started to get better.
A year later, I am riding my bike, running with my dog, and doing yoga in the morning. I haven’t taken an ibuprofen in 8 weeks, and I have reduced my drinking to a beer every once in a while.
I am feeling healthier and happier than ever before in my whole life. And through it all my back still gets stiff and sore.
X-ray picture of a grade 1 isthmic spondylolisthesis at L4-5. Mine is Grade 3.
To be clear, I haven’t had any miraculous physical change: I have a spondylolisthesis, which means my L5 vertebra is displaced off my spine by 50 to 75%, creating a severe curve, and squashing the discs on either side. That won’t ever be fixed.
What has changed is my story.
(continued in part 3 next week)