A piece of trim fell off my everyday glasses a couple days ago, and I haven’t found it. I’m working in the office, instead of from home as I had planned. The coffee drive-through I like to frequent on a workday didn’t open this morning. I poked myself in the eye by mistake. I forgot the midday snack I’d meant to bring for later. I stubbed my toe on my way into the office and dropped my computer bag on my foot.
All of these are minor aggravations barely worth a moment of my attention. There are no bombs dropping here – a useful observation for some perspective. There was a time when any one of these things would have had me angry enough, frustrated enough, to really mess up my day. I’m grateful to practice other practices, these days, than uncontrolled anger and frustration*. Anger and frustration not only wreck my own mood, but they are “contagious” to be around, and tend to degrade the quality of any shared experience. It helps to put these things into context, to frame them differently, and to understand them in a broader perspective (which is a choice I can make).
…So I do that…
I’ve got another pair of glasses with the correct prescription in them (I feel both grateful and fortunate). I have the convenient option to work in the office or from home any day; it’s my choice either way (and I am fortunate to have that choice and appreciate it greatly). There’s decent quality local coldbrew on tap in the office that is provided at no (direct) cost (and I’m grateful to have it). Poking myself in the eye did no lasting damage, and already doesn’t hurt at all (only minutes later). I forgot my snack, but I remembered my lunch, so it doesn’t actually matter. My foot aches a bit but I’ve got my cane handy anyway, and it is a minor aggravation that lacks meaning (even as pain) in the context of the everyday experience of chronic pain – it could be worse. Hell, I’m grateful to be able to walk.
…Better…
So, I breathe, exhale, and relax, and sip my icy cold brew. It’s not a great cup of coffee and the morning has not been a great experience, but it’s only a moment out of a day, and it will pass. I find the experience of anger fairly toxic – my own anger, within myself, specifically. I don’t care for the experience of feeling angry, or having someone in my vicinity dealing with their own experience of anger. It is, for me, wholly unpleasant. It is also reported to be unhealthy to squelch it entirely and take no action to resolve whatever has brought it to the surface in the first place. There’s a balance to strike with regard to anger. Venting doesn’t work to resolve anger – it just tends to become a practice of being angry. Not a great state of being (or practice), in my opinion, and I like to choose (and cultivate) other more positive ways to approach circumstances*. Gratitude certainly feels better than anger…
I have a lot to be grateful for. I sip my coffee contentedly and prepare to begin again.
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*And I do have to actually choose and actually practice! Anger management is a skill that needs to be cultivated and practiced and worked at and… I’m very human. My results vary. lol I’m ever so much better at keeping my anger in check in a healthy way and communicating my feelings with care these days than I was years ago, but it has taken years of practice. Be patient with yourself, if you struggle with anger. Keep practicing. Incremental change over time will win… in time. 😀
I’m sipping my coffee and ignoring (as much as I can) the chronic pain of my osteo-arthritis, which radiates upward from my spinal fusion, which was done years ago, when the state of the art was quite different than it is today. I knew then that my surgery was a new approach to the problem, and that some outcomes were unknown. The goal was to prevent me from ending up in a wheelchair partially paralyzed, and to allow me to continue to serve on active duty (Army). I guess for most values of success, my surgeries were a great success. I’m still walking. I did continue to serve (was even deployed to war in the 90s’), after a period of convalescent “retirement”, although I got “RIF’d” after that war (which broke my heart, but is an altogether unrelated story). So, generally, I’ve nothing to regret about that surgery if I’m just thinking about those details. But…
…There were consequences – of both the injury itself, and the surgeries that followed. The arthritis started to develop in my spine about 3 years after my surgeries. I didn’t understand why I was in so much pain all the time, and it took a rather stupid amount of time for that to be appropriately diagnosed; I was young. Medical bias being a real thing, many doctors were persistently just as “mystified” as I was. What could be causing my pain? How could I have arthritis at my young age? I still feel frustration and annoyance by that lack of curiosity, and lack of diagnostic skill (or persistance). Pain they could not feel themselves did not matter to them.
Then, there were the other things… the persistent chronic itch below my left shoulder blade, that I couldn’t quite reach and that scratching didn’t ease. A “phantom itch” that still bothers me occasionally (CBT really helped with that). A chronically cramped muscle down low on my back, on the left side of my body, most likely a result of the disturbed section of musculature attaching to my spine being put back “not quite in the right place” during my surgery (to make room for the hardware that was there for a year) and which healed into a new, less than ideal, location. This, too, still bothers me, often. Most of it I had to “figure out” in pieces, with limited help from too many doctors, and a lot of study. Sexual challenges (both neurological, and also to do with practical matters like lubrication) that were awkward to discuss were another thing; I was past 60 before a physician finally said, with some surprise, “of course that’s related to your spinal injury” after looking at my records, surgical reports, and images, and listening to me with great care. She seemed so matter-of-fact about it, I ended up enraged for days that no one else had said as much. I went through some shit over that issue with more than one lover, I can tell you. Turned out it wasn’t “my fault” or “a lack of desire”, or anything I could actually do much about; I have a spinal injury. Duh. I spent a few days moping around pretty pissed off about it.
What I thought I understood.
Why am I on about this, today? It’s to do with perspective and knowledge, and how those create our understanding (or don’t). I knew coming out of my surgery all those years ago that I had a permanent “30% stenosis”, and I felt that I understood what that meant. I mean, words having meaning, and I knew the meanings of the words…so… I understand? Don’t I? I thought I “got it”. My lack of real understanding was stunning, and it would be decades before that changed. It wasn’t actually a doctor that changed my understanding. It was math – and a moment at the dining room table with my Traveling Partner; a “lightbulb moment” to do with circles, that was completely unrelated to my spine, my injury, or my pain. lol (Pay attention in school, kids – math matters, and it’s useful stuff.) Something clicked.
What I hadn’t understood, in spite of seeing the images, reading the reports, and discussing with doctors, was what my stenosis meant in my case, specifically. For many years, I imagined 30% percent stenosis as a uniform 30% reduction in a circular area. (I felt pretty stupid when my understanding changed.) Firstly, the spinal canal as a “tubular structure” is not a beautifully perfect mathematical cylinder wherein a slice would appear circular. Not at all. It’s quite different than that. Also, and more importantly, my injury (which crushed two vertebrae, and broke off a spinous process which was then forced into my spinal canal by the impact and subsequently could not be removed) and the repair of that injury did not result in anything like a uniform reduction in area all the way around. Not even close.
Geometry for the win. lol
Reality doesn’t care what we believe. Our pain doesn’t care what we think we understand about our body. Reality is. Pain is. Conditions are what they are regardless of our understanding. So, for years I had struggled with symptoms that made no sense to me – because I so poorly understood my condition – and which I could then not clearly articulate to doctors, who may also not have understood my condition, because (let’s just be real about this, eh) doctors are also human and also have limitations to their own knowledge (and limitations on the amount of time they can spend reading patient histories with the care needed). I understand more/better now, but… I’m still limited by all the things I do not know. I still live within a reality that I perhaps only partially understand because of those limits.
…And reality doesn’t care at all what I understand…
Our perspective and our knowledge limit our understanding – but reality goes on being real, regardless of what we think we know or how we think we understand the world around us.
I breathe, exhale, and relax. Living with the pain is pretty much a requirement. There is no option to live without it, at least not now, not really. I do my best. Maybe that reality will change at some point in the future? Technology changes. Medical progress is made. I’ve learned to practice fairly skillful pain management in the meantime. I’m not complaining, not really. Good self-care and skillful pain management may not add up to a “cure for pain” – but it does help.
I sip my coffee thinking about my Traveling Partner, his injury, his surgery, his progress… he’s come so far, so fast, relatively speaking (although I know it doesn’t feel that way to him). We both deal with pain, and I don’t personally see a future where that’s not a thing we deal with, each having our own experience, each doing our best. I feel fortunate to have a better understanding of my injury than I once did. I’m grateful for a conversation at the dining room table about math and circles and ratios and areas, and grateful for a partnership that understands pain and makes room for love anyway. Grateful for love. Things could be worse.
I look out the window. My mind wanders away from the pain I’m in – probably a change for the better. It doesn’t do to dwell on the pain. Don’t get me started about this fucking headache. I sigh quietly and glance at my calendar, and the clock. It’s time to begin again.
An ordinary enough Spring morning. I’m sipping coffee. Minutes are ticking by. The cool dawn air fills the apartment. My fingers click rhythmically on the keyboard. Traffic swooshes by, beyond the driveway. I am considering the “blank page” in front of me – both actually, on this monitor, and metaphorically, this day ahead of me.
Ask the questions. Do the verbs.
Yesterday’s work day was productive, and felt… short. Very short. The evening that followed was delightful, connected, and relaxed. I slept well. I woke easily, just minutes ahead of the alarm clock, feeling rested. This cup of coffee tastes delicious. My clothes feel quite comfortable. Given this context, the fact that I feel content, merry, and relaxed, this morning, is no particular surprise, right?
This gets me thinking about context, generally. When I find myself feeling miserable for one reason (or many), it changes my outlook on everything that touches my experience. I tend to take more things personally when I am in pain, for example, even though there’s no direct connection between the physical experience of pain, and other qualities of other experiences. It colors my mood, and thus, colors my perception of my experience. If my mood, itself, can alter the way I see my experience, and if the experiences I have in life have the potential to alter my mood… is this a trap – or an opportunity? I used to feel it was a sort of sick joke, and emotional Catch-22 wherein, no matter what, the outcome was always that life sucked. One way or another, I was back to misery, pretty inevitably.
Mindfulness practices, and specifically meditation, unraveled that “trap” – turns out I set that trap myself, and caught myself regularly, fair and square. lol I did most of that to me. I mean, sure, I learned all of it somewhere, but that is so much less significant (for me) than the idea that I built that trap, maintained it with great care (and many verbs), and resisted treated myself any better for a long time with the sort of will and commitment that one generally sees from the eager or ambitious. Sort of scary, looking back, how very skillfully done all that was, and how ferociously I protected myself from any sort of healing progress, for so long. Choices.
Context matters. Where am I right now? Am I okay, right now? How do I feel? Pulling my awareness to this present moment, again and again, and allowing the bullshit narratives to fall away until I am only this human being, breathing in this moment, uncomplicated by assumptions, expectations, and clinging to what is not, there is so much less misery in my experience. This helps me sort out random frustrations, hurt feelings, poorly managed fury, dark days, weird sorrows – nearly all that mess is just made up bullshit, and I can choose differently. It’s often about context. The assumptions I make about this or that detail (or person) really fill it out and make it seem so real. It generally isn’t. I giggle, imagining a world in which everyone around us was truly the embodiment of my assumptions, my thoughts about them, instead of being who and what they actually are.
When I allow others around me to be who they are, without my assumptions and expectations clinging to me, them, or the connection we share, I can also relax and let go of any ludicrous notion about changing them, or fixing them, and just enjoy (or not) who they are, themselves. I can be who I am, too. We can share that time together authentically, and maybe even learn things from each other, and grow. If I’m clinging to a golem built of my assumptions and suppositions about them, filtered through my experience of life and projected onto them, we aren’t even really together, are we? I’m just hanging out with a different version of myself. lol It’s also much easier to be open to people, letting them be them, staying firmly “me”, myself… fewer verbs needed to be real, than to shore up an image.
Context… and authenticity. Perspective. Consideration. Awareness. Presence. All good words for a Tuesday… I think I’ll go out there into the world, with a handful of words, and a gentle heart. It’s a good beginning. 🙂
Evening Light 