Third String

"It's the hardest thing in the world to accept a little success and leave it that way." Marlon Brando

I'm pretty sure that it was "a little success" that could not be embraced or left alone that drove my heart to attack itself as much or perhaps more than it was my genetic propensity. I've said in other places that I always wanted more and success was right up there on the top of that unattainable list.

I was never satisfied with what little I'd achieved. The truth is, I was a for a short while, a second string writer, therapist and teacher and after a few years was finally moved down to third string. The push for first string is the problem, the striving to move from third or second, the unrelenting drive to climb the ladder of success gets so all consuming that is until the ladder falls down on you and need a cardiac surgeon to lift it off.

Today I am content for the first time to be where I am, be who I am, contribute what I can, look back on what I've done and say, "you know it was and is enough" and third string is not bad. At least I'm still in the game and who knows the First String and Second String my give out at any time and then the Coach of coaches may put me back in, but if HE/SHE makes that call I will not wear my heart out in the last quarter of the game.

Question: Are you able to accept where you are or are you still pushing, struggling, driving yourself a little crazy?

Priorities-Again

"For my thoughts are not your thoughts. Neither are your ways my ways..." Isaiah

I never in a million years would have thought that what I needed was a heart attack to motivate me to get my priorities straight. Indeed to a large degree I thought I had them straight. Well if not straight at least not that crooked. But "the crooked shall be made straight," I think Jesus said that and if he didn't I'm going to guess he thought it. Anyway that is what it took--lying flat on my back.

You see four months later as I sit here writing I know in my heart that had I died this time last year many would have said, "he worked hard," "he wrote a lot of books," and maybe they would say "he even helped a few." Now I realize that if people don't say after that Fat Lady has sung her last song, "In the end, he worked hardest at love," then I will have missed the mark again.

Question: What will they say about you?

Finding the Balance Again

“Teach us to care and not to care and to be still.” —T.S. Eliot

In my youth I did all kinds of things in the name of survival or to be thought of as a "nice guy": taking care of everybody else, knocking myself out to prove I was “worthy” of love. I lost a lot of myself in the process.

Or I’d try the opposite side for a while and I’d pretend I didn’t need anybody, the lone wolf who would only look out for old Number One, when secretly I feared that no one else cared about me. Both tactics failed.

In the end I’ve had to begin learning the difference between “care-taking”—giving up my own needs in favor of others’ needs—and caring for people—loving them while respecting their right to live in their own way.

Especially since my heart attack I’ve learned, too, that sometimes “no” is the most loving word that I can say. I've said no quite a bit lately--"no" to exhaustion, "no" to too much traveling and "no" to trying to do this thing called "life" by myself. More yeses are coming--"yes" to more conversations with friends, "yes" to family, "yes" to quietly reading good books and long walks in the park.

Questions: What do you need to say "no" to and what do you need to say "yes" to?

Acceptance

“The pleasures of heaven are with me, and the
pains of hell are with me,
The first I graft and increase upon myself. . .
the latter I translate into a new tongue.” —Walt Whitman

Some mornings like this one my soul is so quiet, I can hear a leaf drop through the branches of the oak tree. I can sense the cool water in the stream that stretches all the way through the valley. I can listen to the infinite play of wind chimes.

Then there are days when a barking dog makes me want to bark back, louder. When serenity is tenuous, even the sound of a plane passing at thirty-five thousand feet can be enough to ruin the morning. Now after my heart attack planes do not perturb me as often as they used to. Even the sound of the young man's car radio boom, boom, booming doesn't bother me like it would have before.

On both kinds of days, the noisy and the quiet, the same challenge exists: to accept and, yes, even love whatever is taking place inside me. To see myself as many, to practice loving these seemingly opposite parts of myself is to begin to learn real love.

Time

Remember when you had so much time on your hands you could "kill" it and not feel a bit guilty about the crime? Remember when you had "all the time in the world"? Do you recall when "time was on your side?" Time was so much in abundance that you could waste time, spend time, lose time,and even make time, time and time again.

Since my heart attack, when time almost caught up with me and killed me I feel more relaxed about time in some ways than I ever have before. And in other ways (none of them morbid) I feel that time is "running" out.

I told a friend the other day that if the next 10 years go by as fast as the last 20 then they will only feel like 5. Today I feel that I want to make the most of the time I have left no matter how long or short that is and the way to this is by only doing what I really love and being with those I love more of the time than not.

Question: Is time a'wastin'?

Numbness Before Awakening

For the last four or five days I have felt my upper chest to be numb. I was fairly concerned about this. I asked the rehab lady if this was normal. She responded, "Yes. It means "it" is waking up."

I remembered how in my twenties and thirties it seemed like someone had given my heart and soul a huge shot of novocaine. I was pretty much "numb" to everything and everyone, with the possible exception of the students I taught. I guess what I'm saying is that numbness is precursor to waking up. Numbness then is perhaps a good sign.

The rehab lady said "waking up may take months." I think it takes a lifetime but that crisis, losses, transitions and change may be fast tracks to sloughing off the deep spiritual, emotional and mental sleep that I know I lapse back into from time to time and sometimes for a very long, long time.

I think often of the Persian poet Rumi's words, "...Don't go back to sleep..."

Question: What did it take to "wake" you up a little bit or a lot?

Transforming a life

The great Russian writer, Tolstoy, said in A Calendar of Wisdom: "The more you transform your life from the material to the spiritual domain, the less you become afraid of death."

Our living room in the house we are renting has not one stick of furniture in it. I'm sitting by the window that looks out onto a beautiful park in a twenty-five dollar lawn chair. My dad telling me the other day about his time spent with my grandfather when he had a heart attack moved me deeply. I am no Tolstoy, but the things I just mentioned are getting more and more important. The need for material things has been taken down a notch or two since my own heart attack. Will this be continued the further away from the crisis I get? Will the spiritual become increasingly important? Will I become less and less fearful of death if it does?

Before my heart attack I thought I was not afraid of death but deeply afraid of pain. Now that I have experienced the latter I'm not so sure of my fears.

Questions: Are you afraid of death or pain? Are you moving from the material to the spiritual? If so how? I would like to know.

Fear and Love

Fear. I'm afraid I'm going to work too much. I'm afraid of getting too stressed. I'm afraid I'm going to get too tired. I'm afraid I'm going to have another heart attack.

I used not to not be afraid of any of the above and consequently I worked too much, got too stressed and way too tired. Maybe fear is not such a bad thing as long as I don't let it completely rule my life.

I'm not afraid about money, I'm not afraid that I won't write anything of importance and I'm not afraid that I am not loved. One thing this heart attack has done is put many things in perspective and shown me how much I am loved. I am so grateful.

Someone once said, I think it was Jerald Jampolsky, "there are only two emotions--Love and Fear." Well I have experienced and am experiencing both simultaneously. For the record fear is receding and love is becoming the true healer it really can be.

What are you still afraid of and what are you loving more and more the older you get?

Taking My Heart Out For A Spin

My thoracic cavity was cracked open by a man I didn’t know. He put his hands in my chest while my heart continued beating with the help of a machine.

That changed me.

How? I’m only now beginning to find out.

Some people say I am more emotionally available. As one woman friend said, “When I saw you I didn’t recognize you.” I did lose some weight, but she went on to say “you seem more approachable.” Perhaps I lost some heaviness of spirit, some urgency to produce, some self-importance or seriousness. In the process I went from feeling strong and almost invincible to anything so mundane as a heart attack (after all they only happen to unhealthy, smoking, hard drinking, stressed out and overweight people or so I thought 6 months ago) to feeling fragile, highly breakable, extremely vulnerable and tentative about so much I would have formerly dove head first into.

Which way of being do I like best? I’d be lying if I said feeling fragile and vulnerable is a comfortable state, but do I want to go back?

I wouldn’t even if I could.

I just need to get used to not being recognized (in more ways than one) and become more familiar with this place where a simple thing like holding my wife’s hand while watching television is an ecstasy producing experience and a walk in the park with my two Giant Malamutes is as magical as it gets. It may take awhile but hopefully I now have a little time that I wouldn’t have had if that man hadn’t taken my heart out for a spin.

What has taken your heart and turned it around?

Opening The Heart: A Beginning

"In order to get where you want to go you have to accept where you really are." I've said this to many people over the years. It is time for me to do it again. I had a heart attack 10 weeks ago and a quadruple by-pass surgery. I was the last on my list of people and last on a lot of people's list to have heart attack. I wasn't super healthy but I exercised regularly, watched what I ate, didn't smoke or drink but I also didn't take into consideration my family history and the genetic component. I hope you will.

This blog is ultimately going to be about how you and I can open our hearts more fully to life, love, experience, art, creativity, health, healing and much more. But it is also going to be about, at least at first, my personal attempts to process this huge life change and perhaps help you in some small ways with your own life changes, transitions, losses and successes.

So here's a question for you to consider and hopefully post your answer/response/stories/insights: How did you come through your most recent "high growth experience"?

In my next blog post I will tell you a little about how I did.

Thanks for the connection.

John Lee