Yesterday, this moment and tomorrow

I had two firsts this past election: For the first time ever, I voted a straight party vote, and for the first time ever, I voted by mail. Then, with the rest of the country, I waited with some anxiety in the uncertainty of the final result. Eventually, it became clear that we had a winner, and this brought for me a noticeable sense of relief. Nationwide there was both a massive outpouring of joy by more than half of the electorate, as well as an equivalent experience of disbelief and non-acceptance by the nearly other half.

I personally did not experience as much joy as many did, not that I wasn’t happy with the result. What was much more troubling for me was that nearly ½ of the country had voted for the other candidate. I had the thought that had the results been otherwise and had the other candidate won, it would have been the other ½ of the country would have been ecstatic. There are more than 70 million people in this country whose mindsets, and values, and perspectives I don’t understand. Should my response have been unmitigated joy? And even here in liberal Massachusetts where 2 in 3 of us voted for Biden, 1 in 3 voted for Trump.

Yes, for sure. I get it. For more than half of the electorate, this election was about finally paying attention to the many things that have been neglected for such a long time. However, maybe we needed the last four years. Would we have paid as much attention to the issues ailing our country had the situation not been what it was? Might another candidate in power not have led to the very polarization that we needed to bring critical matters to the front pages? Would the entrenched injustices simply have continued to go unaddressed?

I recently went to get a haircut from my favorite barber, a jovial young Italian addicted to coffee and cigarettes. He was uncharacteristically glum, and I asked him what was up. He said, “I voted for Trump!” I nearly jumped out of the chair, but he was holding a sharp pair of scissors. I decided to listen instead.

“You know, all you people in Lexington, you can all go to work by zoom when the governor shuts down the economy, but you know what? I need this job. I can’t cut hair by zoom! I have no money, I take pride in my work. Don’t you think I can take precautions and keep my barbershop safe? It’s in my financial interest to make sure that people in my shop don’t get sick. It’s not the government’s job. I voted for Trump. He said he wouldn’t get us into wars, he didn’t. He said he would lower taxes, he did. He said he would nominate conservative judges, he did. With Trump, I had money. I felt that I was in charge of my life. When COVID-19 hit, he wanted to keep things open, and now this fool, the governor wants to close everything down again. What am I going to do? Don’t I matter? All I see is Black Lives Matter signs everywhere? What about me?”

What about him? He was so upset. He felt so unheard. I grew up in apartheid South Africa, and there, our politicians taught us that Black Lives Didn’t Matter. White lives certainly mattered, but people of color were always second class. In our elections, you could choose between one conservative government or another. It seemed a dangerous path. Surely when the oppressed finally had a chance to vote and took power, they would exact an understandable vengeance on White South Africans?

And yet from the confines of the tiniest of prison cells, Nelson Mandela, who would later become the first democratically elected president of South Africa, vengeance was not what he sought. Rather, he wanted equality and reconciliation. Mandela had endured far, far worse oppression than my barber, and yet he lived by a value system that caused him not to suffer; he was the embodiment of compassion and dignity and in living this way, he did not hate, and by not living in hatred, did not suffer. How could this be? Surely, he had every reason to hate, seeing what had happened to him, to his murdered friends, and to his community. But he rose above it all, saying: “No one is born hating another person because of the color of his skin or his background or his religion…People must learn to hate, and if they can learn to hate, they can be taught to love…For love comes more naturally to the human heart than its opposite.”

I was coaching my patient the other day, a young person who was more upset than I had ever seen. “I just called my dad. I found out that a close relative just voted for Trump. I’ll never speak to that relative again. They are disgusting. Can you believe it? My relative voted for Trump!” And yet this was a child whose relative had bent over backwards to ensure that my patient felt loved and protected. A relative who had been there when no one else had visited them in the hospital. Someone who had driven them to therapy, when they needed a ride.

Mandela did not find his oppressors disgusting. His approach to leadership had three core principles: forgiveness, understanding, empathy. He forgave enemies who had perpetrated heinous crimes. He never hated his haters, nor did he attack his attackers. He saw promise in each person, and he was able to validate even his most seemingly evil of adversaries. He recognized that they were products of their circumstances and that because of this, they could only see the world the way they had been taught to see it. Had he retaliated in anger, this would have perpetuated a false narrative that we had been taught to believe about who he was. With deep compassion, he said: “The oppressor must be liberated just as surely as the oppressed.” For Mandela, leadership was not about closing his mind and narrowing his view but was instead about opening his heart to include the suffering of those who had been his captors and oppressors.

My parents had two very different perspectives on parenting. In my youth, my father believed that you pulled yourself up by your bootstraps, whereas my mother believed that people were doing the best they could, given their circumstances, and that it was more compassionate to help where you could. Both had a point, and although I mostly agreed with my mother, I learned from both. My mother was a devout Catholic who told me she was waiting for the Messiah to return. Her reason for treating everyone with deep compassion was that, as she said, “We do not know when the Messiah will come and so it could be anyone. I don’t want to take a chance and treat that person dismissively. Also, my day goes so much better when I act with love and kindness towards someone than when I judge or even hate them.”

With the experience of Mandela and my mother, when I discovered Dialectical Behavior Therapy, I found a natural psychotherapeutic home. DBT was different than any other therapy I had been exposed to. It had in its approach and at its core, an articulated list of assumptions about people, whether patient or therapist that resonated powerfully for me. Marsha Linehan, the developer of DBT, wrote the following:

We assume that patients, therapists, and all people, are doing the best they can.

“The first philosophical position in DBT is that all people are, at any given point in time, doing the best they can. In my experience, borderline patients are usually working desperately hard at changing themselves. Often, however, there is little visible success, nor are the patients’ efforts at behavioral control particularly obvious much of the time. Because their behavior is frequently exasperating, inexplicable, and unmanageable, it is tempting to decide that the patients are not trying. At times, when asked about problematic behavior, the patients themselves will respond that they just weren’t trying. Such patients have learned the social explanation for their behavioral failures. The tendency of many therapists to tell these patients to try harder or imply that they indeed are not trying hard enough can be one of the patient’s most invalidating experiences in psychotherapy.”

The second DBT principle that resonated was Linehan’s seemingly simple observation that we should see people through a non-judgmental stance and recognize that everything is caused. Wasn’t this what Mandela and my mother had been talking about? Yes, bad things happen. But things don’t “just happen”. Everything is caused. Many times, we are asked: “What is the root cause of my, or my loved one’s problems?” DBT is different from other therapies in that we don’t spend too much time looking for so-called “root causes”. If I accept that reality is as it is, and I accept that everything has a cause, I then see that it makes perfect sense that things turned out the way they did. I also see that my liking or not liking an outcome is not relevant to the fact of the outcome. If you like it, it is as it is, and if you don’t like it, it still is as it is. Also, have you ever considered that we typically only ask ourselves, “Why did this happen?” when things don’t turn out the way we wanted, but we almost never ask the question when things do turn out the way we wanted them to turn out. Fairness is almost always a point of view.

And yet even if you get to the cause, those causes had causes. The reason patients, politicians, the country, and we ourselves are how we are, is that we are all caused and shaped: by our genes, our experiences, the information we get from the news channels we watch, and the morals we learn in our spiritual communities. Knowing this deeply is key to arriving at what we need to do in order to create enduring change.

My mother, Mandela, and Marsha saw the best in people, even those who were the most difficult to deal with, whether patient, politician or anyone else. They recognized that our private expression and experience of anger and hatred doesn’t always impact the other person, but instead often keeps us stuck in a cycle of our own anger and hatred. Mandela, politically, and Marsha, clinically, saw that the open expression of hostility, would only lead to further hostility and move us further away from a goal of political harmony or clinical equanimity. And so, because everyone is caused by their own particular circumstances, it makes sense that not everyone sees things the same way. The child who learns to hate, grows up hating; the child who is invalidated, self-invalidates. It all makes sense, whether we like it or not.

We bring our own nature shaped by our own experiences, genes, and learning history to how we see others. We may think that we are not judgmental, but is this accurate? Do we judge a difficult patient on the unit or a politician of the opposing party pontificating on TV? Can we see them as caused by their circumstances, and that given who they are and what they have experienced, it makes sense that they would behave in the way that they do? Are they not, like we ourselves, shaped by the forces that got each of us here?

Now here is where we delve into a beautiful paradox. On the one hand, we have the option to continue to hate and fight and to judge, but if that is our response, the status quo endures. On the other hand, we can choose to change the causes that reliably predict and lead to alienation. For instance, if we have previously shunned our politically opposite neighbor, we can agree to meet with, and then listen with open curiosity to their perspective. Or as therapists, can we commit to notice and change any judgmental attitude we have towards patients whose behavior we find annoying, confusing, or oppositional. Then, if I recognize that something I do causes alienation, I can commit to change that cause and try a new approach. Changing habitual behavior is the element that will generate a different outcome. I don’t pretend to know what the outcome will be, but if I am dissatisfied with the present state of political affairs or clinical outcomes, doing something different is key.

What if we could hold in mind the understanding that all people are a product of their circumstances and are doing the best they can? What if we could sit with them and listen to their legitimate fears? Are 70+ million people in this country evil? Do they not aspire like all of us for a better life for themselves, their children, and their communities? Is the difficult patient not someone who deserves your compassion, rather than someone to be judged and labeled? Do you speak of patients whose behaviors are off-putting and complicated as “that borderline” or use even more colorful language for the politician you dislike?

On a personal level, I struggle with understanding politicians. I don’t always get their motivations and choices, and yet the decisions they make can impact so much of our lives. On the other hand, I also realize that as a White male, it probably does not matter too much to me personally who is in power. I likely won’t be impacted that much. Because of this, in my position of relative privilege, it is important to me that I commit to fight for the rights of people whose voices seem to matter less than mine, while at the same time listening openly to those with whom I disagree politically. But what is even more important than this, is that this fight not be an endeavor to undertake only every four years when the rhetoric is at its most deafening and the plight of the disaffected most jarring. It is something I need to do every single day.

And then at work, can I be open to seeing the ways in which I have more in common than not with the patients who confuse and challenge me the most? Am I open to listening to their fears and concerns, recognizing that the struggles that brought them into therapy are a manifestation of their biology and their circumstances, rather than of some choice to make life difficult for me? In seeing them in this way, and engaging with them with a less judgmental and more compassionate attitude, perhaps they, in turn, will see that I am not the enemy or some dispassionate caregiver.

By practicing living this way, committing anew to seeing the most dissimilar among us with compassion and open curiosity, then tomorrow, and the day after, and the day after that, the other too can begin to believe in the possibility of a shared and healing humanity.

Needing to Pee

 

It is the terrible year of COVID and in my 25 years of being in the field, I have never experienced a greater demand for mental health services. My father had asked for some legal documents to be notarized, and then to get something called an apostille.  I had never heard of an apostille before, but it turns out that it is a form of authentication that is issued by the Secretary of the Commonwealth that verifies the authenticity of a document, including the verification that the notary who notarized the original document was legitimate. It was with a lot of maneuvering that I was able to free up the two hours from work that I would need to go to the State Department offices to get the apostille.

I chugged my iced coffee and headed down, documents in hand, and arrived at the John W. McCormack State Office Building located at 1 Ashburton Place in Boston. Earlier in the day, I had been on zoom for my morning calls, and when I stepped out, noticing that it was colder than I expected, took off my shirt and put on a zippered sweatshirt. On arrival at the security desk at the John W. McCormack State Office Building, I handed in my phone and took off my belt before I headed for the scanner.

“You’ve got to take off ya sweatah,” said the officer in that distinct Boston accent.

“Ok,” I said, “but I’m not wearing anything underneath.” I imagined the experience of what that might be for the people waiting in line behind me. He shook his head and waved me through the scanner.

Arriving at the 17^th floor, I was first in line. This looked promising. The person at the desk looked at the documents and told me that they had not been correctly notarized and that I could either take them back or go to a local bank to get them redone. I had waited for so long that I decided to go to the bank. I had time before I had to return to work to run a group.

On getting to the bank, I noticed that the coffee had started to take its toll and that I needed to pee. The bank officer kindly offered to notarize the documents but informed me that, due to covid restrictions, the bathrooms were not open to the public. After notarizing the new documents, I realized that the ones that my father’s lawyer had sent were different from the original ones and that it was unlikely that the new ones would be valid because they were missing my middle name. No problem, I would call my father.

It was at that precise moment that the speaker on my iPhone 7 died. I could neither make outgoing calls nor receive incoming ones. I could text, but that was all. My dad, who lives in Cape Town, rarely texts and would only have answered his phone had I called, but there was no way for me to make the call. I had to get back to work but could not call to say that my phone was down. I decided to reboot the phone to its original factory settings. It restarted, but the phone still did not work. It was OK though. I had two hours to get my group.

I thanked the bank officer and now the need to pee was significant. It got worse. It had started to rain. I had no raincoat and the drip, drip, drip of the rain made the urge even worse. Glory! A Starbucks in sight! No luck. Bathroom closed. A Dunkin’ Donuts! Same problem. Covid restrictions. I was in the middle of a highly secure government building area with lots of cameras, otherwise, I would have found some obscure wall, but there was no obscurity. When the urge to pee is so strong, everything is miserable, and the stronger the urge, the greater the misery. Drip, drip, drip, and the iPhone isn’t working and it’s running out of battery and the documents are all wrong and I need to pee!

I got to the parking lot and thought, ‘I am just going to go next to the car’. Security cameras everywhere. Images of me peeing on the front page of the Boston Globe flashed before me. Harvard psychiatrist arrested for disorderly conduct. Maybe I should just go back into the rain, get soaked, and just pee in my pants?

I was squirming. It looked like I was doing some bizarre cross-legged version of the macarena and a tango combined. I went to the ticket office where the attendant, clearly recognizing a fellow human in deep distress, allowed me into the staff bathroom. Words cannot capture the joy, so I won’t even try to describe the sensation of relief!  I texted the group co-leader to say that I was on my way. “I’m in group now,” she texted back. I looked down at my phone. It was an hour early, reset to daylight savings time. My schedule was off by an hour.

Emotional and physical distress narrows our focus, and when severe enough, become the singular point of our attention. It is easy to judge people for being rude, for not having foresight, or for behaving badly… but you never know. Maybe they just need to pee.

Live less in the WHAT IF and more in the WHAT IS!

August 2019

The late Thursday evening Cape Air flight from Boston was remarkable for two main reasons. The first was that I was on a Cessna 402 described by Cape Air as "the workhorse of the Cape Air which serves the majority of the destinations in the Cape Air route network." It is a 9-seater plane which allows you feel every air pocket along the way. The second was that, other than a mom with her one-year-old infant, I was the only other passenger on board. I had noticed the toddler at Logan running around the terminal. His mother was wearing a triathlon shirt and seemed like she would have no problem keeping up with the energetic child.

As we took off, the child started to fuss, refusing to stay in his seat and wanting to alternately breast-feed, point out the window, or cry. "Time for my skills," I thought to myself and played a whole host of silly games including peek-a-boo, blowing in his face, and getting him to give me high-fives. This particular intervention brought him endless joy. My distracting the child seemed to be very helpful to his mother who told me while pointing at her shirt  that she had competed in a triathlon the previous weekend and was heading up to the Adirondacks to join her husband and her two other kids. She told me that it had been an impossible day of travel with missed flights and long delays and she was glad it was nearly over. I continued to keep the child distracted while she settled in her seat, relaxed.

"So where are you going?" she asked suddenly.

"I've been invited to teach in Lake Placid at a wellness conference held by the New York Council of School Superintendents," I replied.

"Teaching what?" she continued.

"Skills for teachers. Validation. Distress tolerance. Mindfulness." She seemed interested as long as I was distracting her child.

We landed and entered the  terminal at the Adirondack Regional Airport which described itself on its website as "a full service operation offering regularly scheduled commercial flights as well as charter flights and a full service facility for private aircraft." It is located "in the heart of the Adirondack Mountains in Upstate New York."

The three of us and the pilot disembarked. I did not see where the pilot went, but the mother and her child picked up their bags and left the terminal. They were greeted outside  by her husband who had driven a Toyota minivan to pick them up. "Thanks for your help with the baby," she said turning to me and then climbing into the car.

I stood waiting for someone to pick me up. This was not a completely ridiculous notion. These days I travel all over the world and someone always picks me up at the airport. On very rare occasions I take an Uber. But no one was there to meet me at the Adirondack Regional Airport.

I tried to call my hosts. I should have paid more attention to the fact that I was "in the heart of the Adirondack Mountains in Upstate New York." This I realize is a euphemism meaning: "There is no cellular coverage here."

I saw a Hertz car rental sign above a door. Three cars were parked in marked bays in the parking lot, but there was no one in attendance. The office -- actually more of a garden shed than an office -- was closed. A sign on the door announced that the office would open at 9 the next morning.

The sun was setting and I had run out of clear ideas. I walked around the parking lot holding my phone in the air and then hopped onto a cement barrier where I found a single, although not very enthusiastic, bar of reception on my phone. I requested an Uber, but the app told me that there were no cars available in the area. I called my hosts. I heard laughter and music and the clinking of glasses in the background: "Hey, Dr. A. Welcome. Hope to see you soon. We have a cold beer waiting for you!"

"No wait! I'm stuck at the airport. Lake Placid is 15 miles away!" I shouted into the cacophony on the other end.

"No worries! We'll send a cab for you! See you soon!"

As I waited, the single employee who had greeted us at terminal left through the front door and locked it. I had never been to an airport where someone locked the front door! Skeptical that my partying hosts would be able to locate a cab, I asked the attendant if there was any way I could get to Lake Placid.

She smiled and said "sure!" She made a call and said "Bob will pick you up in 15 minutes," and then got into her car and left. There was very intermittent cellular coverage. At one moment I received  a text from my hosts saying that there were "no cabs available in Lake Placid" at that hour. A few minutes later, "let us know if you find a ride. We're at Jimmy's 21"

I waited and breathed in the glorious air of the Adirondack State Park. All alone. It was not a bad moment. I sensed a stillness that I had not in a while. What joy! I sat on my suitcase looking at the evergreens. They had no trouble just being. I thought of them as as vast army of soldiers fighting against climate change. Grateful.

And then Bob showed up. He was an older man in a large SUV. He welcomed me with a booming Santa-like "welcome to the Adirondacks," and I jumped into the front seat. "First time visitor?" he asked.

"Yes, it's quite beautiful, and certainly vast from what I saw from the plane!"

"6 million acres," he said, almost proudly.

From pickup until the drop-off he spent the next 25 minutes telling me all about the region, the flora, the fauna, the impact of tourism and climate change, his two daughters, one of whom was a physician. He himself had a doctorate in biology and had been the head of the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation for 25 years until his retirement. He had started a livery service after that, but it had become too difficult to manage so now liked to do the occasional ride.

And then we reached Jimmy's 21.

The moments in our life are so rich with nuance and possibility. We spend so much time worrying about all the things that might happen rather than appreciating the moments and lessons of the ones that do happen.  "OK, but what if there had not been a Bob?" asked a skeptical colleague.

There are so many "what ifs" in life. I have rarely found it helpful to dwell in them. We certainly need to plan for situations. I imagine that eventually someone would have come to pick me up. They had 150 people waiting for me to lecture the next morning, but "what if" is NOT what happened. By accepting the moment as it was, I had a wonderful opportunity to appreciate being completely alone, in a place I did not know, surrounded by a powerful army of trees. How sweet is that!

THE SINCEREST FORM OF FLATTERY

JUNE 2018

I woke up exhausted on Wednesday morning. Yesterday had taken a toll on  my resilience. I was carrying three particularly complicated cases of adolescents struggling with enduring thoughts of suicide and all of whom wanted out of treatment. 

One of three had come into my office together asked for my blessing: “You know exactly just how much I am suffering. I can’t believe that you won’t let me die. If you really cared you would let me kill myself.”

At work, the phone was ringing off the hook and I wondered where the expression "ringing off the hook" came from and I thought I should Google it. Pleasant distraction. But then someone knocked on my door asking me if I had seen the new policy on the allowable alcohol content in shampoo before it be considered an intoxicant and as such contraband. 'Really?" I thought to myself. 'Has some administrator decided that these kids are going to get drunk on frigging anti-dandruff shampoo?' 

I needed to get away from work and find some quiet place to breathe. I thought of going for a walk on my favorite Minuteman Bike Trail from Lexington to Concord. It was too pleasant a day and I worried that I would bump into neighbors and other acquaintances and that then I would have to hear about their children and whether I considered 30 milligrams of fluoxetine to be a high dose. 'JUDGMENTAL YOU,' I berated myself. 'What happened to people doing the best they can and the world being as it is?' It was too hard a battle. I had to leave.

I went home for a cup of tea and then announced to my family that I would head off to the Cambridge Zen Center for a brief sit. To my surprise, my teen sons asked to go along with me. I had been on 5-day silent retreats quite a few times, and they were always curious about my experience with sitting, but they had never expressed any interest other than the curiosity. “Really?” I asked.

“You seem to like it. It seems to relax you,” they answered.

The boys are not the kind of children whose idea of a free summer afternoon is hanging out with their dad, meditating in Cambridge. They are typical boys, robust adolescent males who spend time playing basketball in the driveway, hanging out in the town center with their friends, occasionally sneaking a beer from the fridge and arguing with each other. I noticed a sense of tremendous gratitude as we headed off to Cambridge. They had noticed something in the way that mindfulness had changed me and they wanted to find out more about it and even go to practice with me. “Is there anything particular that we need to do when we get there?” they asked.

“I haven’t been there before but the website says it is a one hour sit. I am not sure as to the format, but unless they instruct in a different way, you will find a cushion and sit cross-legged on it. Keep your eyes open, and find a spot on the ground in front of you. It will be like a mental anchor point.Then you want to simply start noticing your breath as you inhale and exhale. As you breathe gently, not forced, count your breath. You will notice your mind wandering to all sorts of things. This is completely normal. When it does wander you might not even be aware that you have drifted away, but then you will realize that you are in the Zen center, and this in turn will be the realization that you are here to be mindful!  Simply notice that your mind has wandered and go back to your breath,” I instructed them. “But really, you don’t have to worry because there is no ‘right way’ to notice; the moment you are aware that your mind has wandered and can bring it back to the focus on your breath, that moment is awareness and that is mindfulness.”

Not having been at the Center before, it took a few minutes longer than I expected to navigate the one-way streets and then to find a place to park. Anxious to not be late we quickly went in and were instructed to wear robes. I had never worn robes during meditation before. “A new practice,” I thought.  We put on the robes and headed to the hall where we were told to sit only along the side-walls, “but neither in the back of the hall nor the front of the hall.”

There were perhaps fifteen other people in the hall, all sitting in silent pose. The group consisted mostly of older men and women all facing the center of the room, and all with there eyes closed. The teacher sat at the front of the hall with his back to us. I took two blue zafus, the round cushions used in Eastern meditation, and sat in the more comfortable Burmese pose rather than the lotus position that the others in the room were sitting in.  My boys took their cushions and my older son walked quietly across the hall an sat across from me.  My younger son sat to my right.

After fifteen minutes of sitting, my older son appeared uncomfortable in his pose.  This being his first sit, and not knowing what to do, he moved his right leg out in front of him on the floor to stretch. His distress appeared to ease but his left leg must have similarly ached and out came his left leg. Rather than sitting cross-legged he was now sitting with both legs stretched out in front.

I noticed a sense of mortification. ‘Was he violating some sacred practice or rules of the center? Was he being disrespectful?’ came the thoughts.

I tried to make eye contact with him, but he remained seated and staring at a spot in front of him as I had instructed.  I observed my own physical discomfort and reminded myself that discomfort is OK and that it need not consume me. I let go of the discomfort and then looked back to him. Now his shoulders must have started to hurt. He leaned back onto his elbows and soon he looked like someone enjoying a day at the beach.  My younger son was watching his brother later confided in me that he thought his brother’s behavior to be a bit strange. Nevertheless, he too, noticing his own discomfort, did as his brother did and stretched out a bit before settling back into a more formal position. Just before the end, my older boy recomposed and once again sat formally as the master clacked the wooden blocks to signify the end of the session.

I noticed relief at the end of the sitting. I had been so worried that we were going to be kicked out or reprimanded and was grateful that we hadn't been. Then I realized just how attached I had been to them sitting in a certain way and yet was also overcome by an overwhelming sense of gratitude for the experience and I started to tear up. My boys had given up their afternoon to be with me and to sit, or lie, or stretch at the Center. To BE with me. On the way home, they shared their observations of the hour. Even this brief practice had been useful. “It’s just strange that all the world was going on around and no one knew we were in there. It’s just a different point of view. That was cool,” they reflected. 

I left with two strong conclusions. Simply talking about mindfulness or teaching mindfulness skills is not enough. It was the effect that my mindfulness practice had had on my relationship with them, a more thoughtful and reflective connection and they wanted to know more. If you want to be a teacher, be a practitioner too.

The second was more of a note to myself:  My kids are far less predictable than I thought them to be and that in truth, is a wonderful thing.

TRUE

In the shadows of intention 

Deep below your wakeful sleep

Underneath made-up delusions

Awe filled truth will make you weep.

Yet endless, mindless repetition

"I am good and, how are you?"

“Just two sugars in my coffee”

Block your seeing what is true.

Reality awaits you, dreamer

But fear and ignorance arise.

And block the path to morning’s sunshine

Obscuring knowing you are wise.

Oh, blinded sailor, on your voyage

So lost, adrift, your home so far

The windless wind that guides your sails

Asleep you’ll never see your star

Now ask yourself one final question

Lest all be gone in endless night

That does not waken in the morning:

“Did I live true with all my might?”

The Curious Case of the Missing Snow

It's Wednesday morning, February 1st. To be precise it is 4 a.m on February 1st when I am awakened to the sound of a snow plow going up my street. Out of a deep slumber I smile to myself, happy that we've been blessed with winter snow and open the curtains to see what the overnight storm has brought. But there's nothing. The road surface is essentially black. There is a dusting of snow on the sidewalk. It must have been a dream. Slightly disappointed by the lack of snow and my snow-plow hallucination, I climb back into bed. 

To be clear, by not much snow  I mean there was less snow on the road than there were attendees at the recent inauguration. To claim otherwise would be  an example of "alternative facts."

But then just as I am about to pull the covers over my head and hoping for a more pleasant outcome to the rest of my sleep I hear the plow again. However, this time I am definitely awake. I grab my iPhone and go to the front door and take a photo of the black-top. 

Winthrop Road Feb 1, 2017



I hear the truck, but don't yet see it and then the plow comes around the corner. And then another follows soon after. They are plowing the black and clear surface of our road. I take pictures and videos so that I can show any disbelievers and I wonder what on earth is going on. 

What has reality become? Are these climate change denying plow-drivers? There is no snow! There are only sparks flying off the road where your plow meets the tar. We are paying to plow snow that isn't and then will have to pay for potholes that shouldn't have been. 

There is so much suffering in the world and I truly appreciate how well we are taken care of in Lexington. I don't take it for granted. We live a life of such privilege and have so much to be grateful for, but it is over the top to send the plows out when there is no snow, especially when it is 4 in the morning, I mean if we are going to waste tax-payer money, money that could be going to our schools and plenty of other worthy causes, don't rub salt in the wound by waking us up. And speaking of which, they did not appear to have spread any salt, so that's something.

THE NATURE OF THE CHOLLA CACTUS

A Reflection After Mindful Walking at the Desert Renewal Retreat in Tucson, Arizona

After the morning sit, our group of thirty retreatants would go for a mindful walk. As I was rapidly discovering, anything I could do mindlessly I could do mindfully, including walking. Up until that point I am certain that I had never paid attention to the act of walking, or at least certainly not since infancy when I first stood from a crawl, spread my arms and took those first tentative steps towards my mother. Walking is something that I  take for granted, a way of getting from one point to another. But this walking mindfully was a different matter altogether. Not in the sense that the biomechanics are any different, but in the way of paying attention to it. "Notice each step," instructed Father Pat, our Catholic Priest and Zen Master (but that's another story), "notice how it feels, how your foot touches the ground, the sound that the step makes, and then expand your awareness to the path, the other ambient sounds, and the temperature of moment."

The first morning walk in the desert had us meandering in a single line on a path behind the retreat. Marsha (Linehan) led us on the route which took us up a slight hill between the many forms of cactus that call the Sonoran desert home. On reaching the top of the hill, we stopped to take in the sight of the yet-to-rise sun reflecting its light on the pink underbellies of the desert clouds. Then we turned around and went back to the hall for more sitting meditation.

On the way back the person in front of me brushed up ever so slightly against a very bushy, almost cuddly-looking, cactus. A round stem snapped off the cactus and landed on the path in front of me. I need to fast forward to say that I later came to discover that the cactus is also known as the jumping cholla cactus or teddybear cactus. It is said to jump because the joints between the seed-bearing stems are so weak that they break easily, which is its way of ensuring that it will easily disperse and spread its seed. The very thorns of the teddy bear cactus are in turn covered by hundreds of tiny scales. There are thorns on thorns, and there exists no process for easily removing the stems from clothing. I am also told that it is extremely painful to remove if it attaches to the skin.

But I knew none of this as I walked mindfully down the path. When I spotted the stem on the path, and mindful that many of us were wearing sandals, I timed my step so I could kick it off the path for fear that someone would step on it. What happened next was that the stem, which was round and the size of a small apple, stuck to my sandal but it was only after I took the next step that I realized that it was stuck to my footwear. I became increasingly self-conscious with this prickly ball clinging to my sandal. As discreetly as I could, with my next step I tried to shoo the cactus off my sandal by waving my foot into the air. This attempt seemed to embolden the cactus which simply dug in deeper. The battle was on. I did not move faster as we had been instructed to walk at a steady pace. I did not want to disrupt the rhythm of the line, but my attempts became more vigorous in trying to jiggle the cactus off. Eventually I was hopping on one foot and shaking my leg violently, but to no avail. This had to stop. I could not even imagine what my fellow walkers were thinking. I bent down and tried to brush it off with my hand, but all this did was force a few thorns into my fingers. I was contemplating my dilemma when I spotted a forked stick lying ahead on the path. On reaching the stick, I picked it up and pried the cactus off with the fork at the end of the branch, and eventually reached the safety of the meeting room and sat on my cushion.

During the afternoon sitting sessions, when the irritation of the thorns embedded in my fingers was more than I could stand, I was relieved by the opportunity to meet with Father Pat in a one-on-one session to reflect on my experience of the day. This was the one and only time we broke silence and it lasted only minutes. I told him of my attempts at paying attention during the walk, how difficult it had been after my encounter with the cholla cactus. “I don’t think I learned anything today. I have these thorns in my fingers that I want to remove, but I can’t as all I do is sit. I learned nothing about my nature today.” He smiled and looked kindly on me. “Perhaps,” he said, “but today you understood the nature of the cholla cactus.” 

I went back to my cushion, meditating on his brief reflection and the next thing that popped into my head was a joke my brother had once told me.

            “Dad was a man of few words. One day he came up to me and said: “son...”’

That was father Pat. Quiet. A man of few, yet profound words. And then something seemed to make sense. Father Pat was as he was, just as the cactus is as it is and just as I am as I am. 

Saving Jesus: A Confession

I was raised Catholic. This fact is relevant to the story but more of it later. On a late afternoon run in mid-December, I headed up Highland Ave and across to the grounds of an old convent not far from my house. At one time the religious community had been home to a thriving kindergarten and grade school but the secular life had taken its toll on interest in a spiritual education. With dwindling enrollees and finances, the nuns had to sell off many of the buildings no longer in use. Today, the main building is the last one in use, and functions as a retirement home with nursing care.

One of the buildings on the grounds is the former school and I read in our local rag that the town had recently bought it with the idea of creating more public-school space. I decided to jog around the building before continuing on my regular route and stopped at a window to see if there was anything of interest. I am by nature a very curious person.

There is an excitement that comes with curiosity, which, when added to the cold weather of that December afternoon, led to a sudden filling of my bladder and an overwhelming need to pee! 

I started to squirm. Desperate, yet worried that I would be seen by the nuns or the elderly residents of the retirement home and with no easy toilet solution in sight, I walked to the other side of the school where the bushes, the building and the low light of winter's early dusk would provide enough cover to answer nature's very insistent call.

As I relieved myself behind a bush, and looking over my shoulder to make sure no one was coming, I noticed a white “something” in another bush maybe twenty feet away. 

After I was done, I walked over to the bush and parted the branches. There, standing at four feet  tall and with wide open arms was a statue of Jesus on a pedestal facing the school. He did not seem happy and I don't think it was just me. Years of neglect in this suburban wilderness had left the white paint peeling all over his body. He had a discoloration under his eyes that gave the appearance of him crying and immediately I put my hand on his head and said “sorry Jesus.” I noticed a twinge of guilt at having relieved myself in front of him, but I knew he would forgive me.

Fast forward a few weeks to Christmas Eve: I hadn’t been to Mass in a long time. My relationship with Catholicism had been and remains complicated and not relevant to the matter of this entry, nevertheless I thought that it would be great to go to midnight Mass and connect with the community of faithful who were celebrating. I asked my 17 year old if he wanted to come with me and I was pleasantly surprised when he said “yes.”

After Mass, he said “hi” to a few of the young people he recognized from school and overall, despite the lateness of the hour, seemed in bright spirits. We got in the car and an unexpected thought popped into my head. It may have been best for it to have stayed in my head but instead I blurted it out “Hey! I have an idea! Do you want to go and save Jesus??” I told him about my run and finding the statue of Jesus slowly decaying at the abandoned school.

I knew that there was something wrong about my idea but there also seemed something right.  He smiled and said "alright," but then as we approached the convent he asked: “Dad, if you think we are doing the right thing, why are you turning off your headlights?” He had a point.

I parked as far away from the main building as I could. We got out of the car and quietly closed the doors. I walked him over to the appointed bush and Jesus had not moved. Instead he stood, sad and cold on his birthday. “What are we going to do?” whispered my son. “Let’s take him and put him in the gardening shed at home,” I suggested excitedly. “That way, he’ll be out of the cold and then maybe we can find some paint and fix him up!” "Shhh," he said pressing a finger to his lips, "too loud."

We tried to lift Jesus. He was heavy but movable, but just then the voice of reason emerged from my son: “Dad what the heck do you imagine will happen when mom opens the shed and finds a statue of Jesus staring back at her from inside?” Another good point. “Also, there is something wrong about stealing Jesus, and leaving him in the shed especially on Christmas Day!”

“We’re not stealing him; we’re saving him so that that he can be restored to his glory!” Jesus was getting heavy so we put him back on the pedestal. “Hey, I have an idea. Why don’t we put him in the car and take him to the Church? We can leave him on the front steps!”

He thought about it for a while and finally said “Dad, it’s a good idea, but it’s too weird. Can you imagine the parishioners finding Jesus on the steps on Christmas morning? What if the cops stop us? What are you going to say to them? That you were bringing Jesus back to Church? Let's leave him. He’ll be OK here. He’s been through a lot over the past two thousand years, he’s going to survive a little snow and rain and flaking paint.”

My boy! 17 and so wise. With that, we wished Jesus a happy birthday and headed home, my heart filled with the joy of the shared experience with my son on the blessed night. 

The kiss, the pamphlet, and the love

My father-in-law died today. On my way to the hospital on an already dreary, rainy late-November day, fall's empty branches hung from miserable trees, forlornly accepting their lot. Siri guided me through unfamiliar back-roads but all I recall of the drive to the hospital is the branches. It was as if all of the roadside trees had decided that this was weeping-willow day, and had dressed the part.

I definitely would not be able to retrace the drive from work to the hospital. Other then the trees my next memory was walking into bay 5 in the Newton-Wellesley emergency room where my wife, my sister-in-law and my mother-in-law sat at the bedside of my father-in-law's lifeless body. We all started to cry, and hug. There was nothing else to do, no more to be done.

He was a brilliant man. It would be easy to say this out of respect but that is just a fact. He spoke many languages, traveled widely, read profusely, and exercised regularly. He was a mathematician who got his PhD from MIT, graduating with distinction and was best known for his work on "pseudo differential operators and the heat equation approach to the Atiyah–Singer index theorem". He wrote papers entitled: "Trace Expansions for the Zaremba Problem",  "Conic degeneration of the Gauss-Bonnet operator" and "Contraction semigroups for diffusion with drift". He was a brilliant man.

He was a New England Yankee, and in his case the stereotype of the "pull-yourself-up-by-the-boot-straps, no complaint, stoic, maple syrup and nature loving, wood carving, intellectual renaissance man" fit to the proverbial T. In this sense, in his nature he was sensible but never overtly demonstrative. A hug given was one most definitely deserved.

Over the past few years and more so in recent months, his heart began to struggle with the burden of incessant beating. All the top minds in cardiology worked to figure out why a man as fit as he, someone who had run track at Haverford and who would be seen biking around the hills of Meredith and Sanbornton in New Hampshire in his early 80s could be struggling so. Neither pacemakers nor medications made an enduring dent. Earlier this month, he was admitted to the Brigham and was diagnosed with cardiac amyloidosis which we were told is a condition caused by deposits of abnormal proteins, known as amyloid, in the heart, and that when this occurs, the heart becomes stiff, unable to pump properly and thereby causing fluid build-up in the lungs, in turn making breathing difficult.

The last time I saw him was Thanksgiving. He labored walking up our front steps and he lay on the couch while waiting for dinner.  Throughout his struggle, his mind never failed. He had a wonderful sense of humor and purpose. His moments were rarely wasted with frivolity and that night he saved his energy to bemoan the current polarization of our country, sharing his fear that many progressive aspirations would be undone after years of fighting for a more compassionate country, one tolerant of many views and one capable of listening even when the views were dissonant. He lived the peaceable principles of his Quaker faith.

At the end of dinner, when the effort of sitting at the table surrounded by loving children and grandchildren was more than he could bear, my in-laws decided that it was time to leave. As I walked him out, he looked at me, put his arm around my shoulders and said "thank you". Then for the first time in our 26 year relationship he planted a kiss, through bearded lips, on my cheek. I could still feel the bristles, when he said "good-bye."

When I arrived at the hospital, the grand old man lay peacefully still, surrounded by those who loved him. It is one of life's truths that there is no perfect thing to say in the face of such a loss. It is hard to know exactly what to do or what to say. The best option is probably to be there for those you love while they come to terms with the finality of everything that will forever more endure as memories. It was on entering the room that I noticed the irony in this most sacred of moments when a well-meaning attendant came in and left an otherwise nondescript pamphlet entitled "What to do when your loved one dies." It was the kind of pamphlet street vendors give out when selling their wares at 20% off, or that supermarkets dispense with recipes for cream of pumpkin soup. How the magnitude of a life could be diminished to a check-list of "to-dos" further surrealized an already surreal moment.

I came home early to meet my soon to be 13 year-old, and knowing that he would be surprised that I was home, I told him of his grandpas passing.  We sat together and cried for 10 or 15 minutes, and then he asked me "Dad I have often wondered what I would say to someone that I loved when I knew that I might only have a little time to be with them. You just never know when that will be." I held him and told him I had no plans to leave him anytime soon, and then through his tears he whispered, "I love you dad," and then through mine I hugged him even harder.

R.I.P Bob, you lived each moment pure.

Striking Oil

The other day I received the following text from my 16 year old son:  "Do we have omega-3 oil at home and if not can we get some?" This was rather different from his usual: "can I have 4 friends for a sleepover?" or "there are only 3 girls downstairs"  or "OK I'll turn the music down." An unusual text from an adolescent is not unexpected, however this one immediately brought to mind Twain's aphorism: “When I was a boy of 14, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be 21, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years.”

A Brief Detour

Before saying more about the text, I need to tell you about my obsession with omega-3 oil, a substance without which our brains could not exist. Back in my youth my mother would give me a teaspoonful of cod-liver oil. Cod and other cold-water fish, have plenty of omega-3s in their flesh and cod-liver oil is an excellent way to get concentrated omega-3.  One of the omega-3s, docosahexaenoic acid -- also known as DHA -- is not only the dominant omega-3 fatty acid in the brain but is also essential to brain function and this is because it is a major component of brain cell membranes and it influences the way that brain cells talk to each other. You would think that over millions of years of human existence we would have evolved multiple ways to manufacture and accumulate this essential element of brain structure and function and yet despite its critical role in how the brain works, humans cannot make DHA and the only way to get omega-3s is through our diet.

Of particular interest, DHA accumulates in the areas of the brain associated with learning and memory. DHA regulates the formation of new nerve cells, new connections between nerve cells and impacts the speed of messages between neurons. It is also a key component of the covering that surrounds and protects nerve cells, a substance known as myelin.

Myelin, is a fatty substance that wraps around the nerve cells in our body. Scientists have found that the more myelin around a nerve cell, the faster and stronger a message travels down that nerve cell. Most myelination happens naturally and most of it during childhood. Myelin forms when nerve cells fire, and they fire when they are being used. Children generate more myelin than adults do because they tend to be more active, both physically and mentally, than adults are.The way that myelin forms is the more an activity is repeated the more the nerves that control that activity get myelinated, and with the more myelin that wraps around those nerve cells, the quicker and easier the activity becomes. 

Understanding the role of myelin means not only understanding that repeating behaviors (quantity) improves the activity, whether it is walking or Olympic running, but repeatedly doing it correctly also improves the quality of the practice. Practicing doing things repeatedly, but incorrectly means becoming good at doing the behavior incorrectly! When I trained in Judo many years ago, my coach used to say, "It's not that practice makes perfect, it is that perfect practice makes perfect." It is important to make corrections before myelination wires the "incorrect" way of doing the behavior. Myelin is essential in all of this and so DHA is essential.

My 16 Year Old as a Child

Because of how critical omega-3s are and because the only way to get them is from our diet, many of the foods we bought for the children were rich in omega-3s. As they got older I felt that they were not getting enough in their diets and I bought all sort of supplements and tried to get my kids to take them. For my 16 year old, as a young boy he found that most omega-3 pills were too big. He refused the cod-liver oil liquid form and he said that the gummies "tasted yucky". Eventually found a cream form and told him that he had to take it saying: "You have to take this. It is good for your brain, heart and nerve cells." When he was very little I would hide it in ice-cream or yogurt, and at times simply put it in a spoon and told him he had no choice. He was a good sport and agreed, though with great disgust, but eventually he didn't care how good it was for him. He started to hate the ordeal so much that he increasingly fought me on taking the stuff and by age 7 it was not worth forcing the issue so I gave up even trying.

Back to the Text

Fast forward to the text. I was sitting at my desk at my outpatient clinic when his text came in. I texted back that I was sure we had some and that I would find them when I got back home. That evening I asked him what the omega-3 thing was all about. "Well do you know how good they are for you? My wrestling coach was telling me. They make you faster, with better reflexes and help your memory and everything! Even your heart! Do we have any? I have to start taking them."

Sam Levenson was right: "Insanity is hereditary; you get it from your children!" 

Judge Not

Soon after we moved into our home I found a quaint barbershop in the center run by a Marco, an old Italian man with a deep coarse voice. He was a chain smoker and would have a dry cigarette dangling out of his mouth during haircuts and then head to the back room to light up between appointments.

On the walls of his shop were predictable pictures of gondolas, maps of Sicily, and photos of Sinatra in Vegas. Interesting about the photos was that Marco appeared alongside Sinatra. "In my youth I was a back-up singer and I spent 2 years with Frank." "Why did you leave?" I asked him on several occasions. He never really answered the question and the closest I ever got to an understanding was when he said: "It wasn't the singing. It was the other stuff. I couldn't stay in Vegas. Things got too hot."

I went to him for four years and one Friday morning he told me: "Doc, I'm going to sell the shop. I got lung cancer and it's bad. You know it's the smokes. I got maybe a month or two." I was shocked by his declaration. As he started cutting my hair, he opened up, as if in some confessional, and I listened as he told me his story of coming to the USA, getting involved in some "bad stuff with some bad guys," moving to Boston after living in Vegas, getting married and divorced, then opening up his shop where he finally found peace. He took his time, pausing to catch his breath, making sure he had left nothing out. It was the longest haircut of my life

After the haircut that day, I shook his hand and thanked him for his years of great service and wished him peace as he faced his final days. I never saw him again and for some time the shop remained closed.

I tried a few other hair-dressers but none captured the combination of character, great haircut and closeness to home. And then one day the shop re-opened. Gone were the Italian memorabilia, the smell of cigarettes, the old swivel chairs and in came signed photographs of Patriot, Bruins, Red Sox and Celtic greats. Bright wall colors, replaced the red and white striped wall-paper and the new paint-job made the shop look bigger. The chairs were new and well padded and faced a wall of clear mirrors where aged and framed single mirrors had once hung.

The new manager was young and energetic. Within months it was hard to get an appointment and we struck up a great relationship. By his station, nearest the window looking out onto Massachusetts Avenue, was a picture of a handsome young boy. "That's my son," he told me proudly. "He has has some problems, he is on the spectrum but he is the joy of my life." He told me that his father-in-law owned the store and that they owned a chain of similar stores throughout Boston. "I hope that one day I'll make enough to buy him out and then this will be mine."

He knew that I was a child psychiatrist and and that I had written a book on parenting children with autism and we bonded over how society sees children with hidden disabilities, disorders or differences, conditions not visible to the eye, yet manifest by the child's difficulty in functioning in the world they live in.

In a few years he became the barber to children whose hair no one else would cut. These children, some of whom were intolerant to human touch, somehow succumbed to his gentle manner and they left his shop looking sharp and stylish. People came to him from all over New England to have their children with developmental differences get a haircut.

He told me of the struggles that many of his families had had to endure. The young mother whose millionaire husband had left her when he realized his child had autism, the parents whose three children were all on the spectrum and who had been blamed for their children's "bad behavior" by a school-teacher, the pediatrician who refused to examine his child until the child was under complete control.

In the early years, as his business grew, he hired many assistants. After a few months they would disappear. "What happened to that other guy?" I would ask. "The guy was a crook. Stealing money from the till. I caught him and kicked him out telling him if he ever came back I would go to the police." And so it was that employee after employee would be hired then fired for stealing money. "They all seemed so nice. You have such bad luck," I sympathized.

His dedication to kids on the spectrum was beyond question. Driven by his love for his son, he was remarkably sensitive to any intolerance of children with special needs. One day while I was waiting for my hair-cut and marveling at the way he was dealing with a particularly fidgety child, a man, also waiting in turn, looked at a parent, "can't you control your child?" he said out loud while pointing at a young boy who was running around flapping his arms and who appeared to be quite happy.

The manager put his scissors down and looked at the man: "Get the f@ck out of my store you f@cking a$$hole, and don't ever come back." The man blanched and stayed seated and said, "How can you stand this, why can't people control their kids?" The owner approached the man, "Did you hear me?" The man's eyes widened and realizing the order was real, stood up quickly and left. All the waiting parents applauded and he went back to cutting the fidgety boy's hair.

His compassion transcended that for kids on the spectrum. He hired a new crop of assistants, all of whom were people who had openly struggled themselves with various vices and mental conditions. One employee was a man who had suffered a minor stroke and who despite his left sided weakness was still able to hold scissors and give a great haircut. Another, and my favorite, was a young Italian who had been at AA for five years and went daily because alcohol had nearly killed him. He hired young people with Down's syndrome to sweep up the hair and paid them more than minimum wage.

The young Italian told me that he himself was trying to give up smoking because it was affecting his soccer play. He reminded me of Marco because of his reflection that the shop had brought him peace. Every 4 months he received a shipment of Italian coffee from his grandmother in Florence and he kept a package for me out of his stash as a gift for our shared love of coffee.

Recently I went in for my haircut and my Florentian went on and on about the weather, the record snow in Boston and the relative lack of snow in Anchorage. "Do you know that the weather is so hot  in Alaska that they had to change the course for the Iditarod dog race?" I told him that I had not known, and after a while I asked him where the manager was, that I had not seen him in months. He held his right index finger to his lips instructing me to be silent, and after the haircut beckoned me to follow him into the backroom. "You didn't hear? He's gone. Done. His father-in-law told him to get out. All of us here in the store told his wife to leave him!"

"Why? What happened? He was such a great guy! So kind and a great hairdresser, he really cared about people with problems." I asked.

"Turns out that he was stealing money and blaming it on the other guys. That's why they were getting fired. He was using the money for crystal meth. Using nearly every day. He couldn't take care of his kid because he was spending all the money on drugs. It's really sad."

And so it is. This compassionate man had succumbed to the power of crystal meth's addiction. It destroyed his relationships, his family and his career and now all these kids throughout New England are left without the one person who could cut their hair.

Judgment comes in so many flavors. I realize that I had judged him as wonderful. In the depths of his descent into addiction it would have been easy to judge him for his failure and weakness. It is easy to make snap decisions about people based on the little information we have of them. We don't really know the lives of others. Like the manager, I too am flawed dealing with my own moments of darkness and struggle, hidden to the experience of others but there nonetheless.

And so I commit to not judge those whose lives I do not know. To neither be blinded in adoring awe of their good works nor be derisive of behavior I don't understand or agree with. I commit to be curious and try to be more understanding in the belief that people are trying to do the best they can and that sometimes the best they can do is behave in ways that end up destroying their lives. I send them all the loving compassion I can muster and hope the manager fins his way back to the store. I miss him.

The Universe has a Sense of Humor! Mindfulness, Ego and Lessons Learned

Insight Meditation Society, Barre, MA

Saturday morning.

I woke up at 5 on the second day of retreat, and after a simple breakfast of oatmeal porridge and green tea, headed to the meditation hall for a day of contemplation with my fellow retreatants. 

The day’s practice consisted of periods of silent sitting alternating with mindful walking. The only interruptions were a lunch of salad, freshly baked wheat loaf and a vegetarian soup and then later that evening a light dinner consisting of soup, bread and fruit or dessert. 

I needed the retreat. I run 3East, a unit dedicated to the treatment of suicidal adolescents, and the work is filled with helping young people overcome the suffering of enduring misery and unrelenting suicidality. 

The tension of weeks of work continued to evaporate as the day progressed and I looked forward to the evening sitting session before heading off to bed. As the summer light faded the evening birds settled from a day chirping and singing. Their song had been a delightful source of anchoring attention, and when they stilled the flickering candles on the altar at the front of the hall barely overcame the darkness that brought with it drooping eyelids and a desire to sleep. 

When the session ended, one by one people left the hall, and I fought the desire to head back to my room to sleep. I wanted to sit for a little longer. “Pay attention, notice drowsiness, notice that you just had the thought “pay attention,” get back to your breath.” 

Struggling with sleepiness, I noticed anxiety which relented as I refocused on my breath. 'Where were you all day?' "Always here," answered the breath as I counted: Breathe in 'one' breathe out 'one', breathe in 'two' breathe out 'two' breathe in 'three' breathe out 'three'... More people left and again I started to fade. Soon there were only three of us left in the hall and a gentle moonlight meandering in through the windows added a touch of wonder to the moment and then the next moment and the next. A summer breeze seemed to come out of nowhere creeping in through the semi-opened windows, teasing the curtains to join it in a dance. Oh the joy, the whimsy, the universe at play! One person got up and left quietly. One fellow traveler left in the room. 'I wonder if I will be the last to leave?' the thought floated by. My ego chimed in, 'you can be the last to leave!' Pride awakened and joined the ego, 'you will have sat here longer than anyone else.' I noticed these thoughts, and then gently let them go. 'Naughty mind,' I thought judgmentally and then judged the judging. 

Back to breathing. 'Behind me, the person is sitting behind me to my left.' In the gloom of the hall, I glimpsed the outline of my companion through the corner of my eye. They were sitting so very still, although every now and then I sensed them moving rocking back and forth. Half an hour passed. I looked down at my watch. 11:03. Ego and pride came back 'you can do this, you can out-sit them.' I protested, 'This is not about beating anyone! This is not a competition, and besides I have to be up at 4:45.' 

"I can let it go!' I decided to call it a very late day and immediately noticed joy arise. My companion had taught me an important lesson that day! They had given me the opportunity to notice my rigid attachment to a goal, to notice pride and ego, even while on retreat.

 'Thank you my companion.' My heart exploded with loving kindness for the lesson. With that I got up quietly, straightened my cushion, put my hands together, and bowed slightly towards the altar. Then, I turned to my left with the intention of bowing with gratitude to my teacher. I did so then realized there was no one there! Instead a large potted shrub in the back of the room swayed gently back and forth in the occasional midnight breeze. I bowed and smiled at the mischief of the universe, and the plant seemed to smile back. I committed to stop by to say hello in the morning.