The Real Work

“It may be that when we no longer know what to do we have come to our real work and that when we no longer know which way to go we have begun our real journey.” —Wendell Berry

At mid-life or other watershed periods, many of us feel lost, confused, uncertain of the terrain ahead. Sometimes I turn to look back at the well-worn patterns of the more familiar past, and I know I can’t bring some of the old ways forward into the future. These times seems to call for a kind of rebirth.

I don’t have to totally leave my career or make a major geographical move in order to meet this challenge, but I can take stock of how I work and relate to others. I have to understand myself differently in the world. I can take the pressure off to prove my worth through work, since finally I know now that I'm worthwhile regardless of what work I do.

Becoming a new person inside, getting a clearer understanding of life’s priorities, is the road my changing body and soul must walk. I can no longer coast on the blissful ignorance of youth; now I must roll up my sleeves and use real, permanent,great inner resources —wisdom, faith, love—to live the rest of my life as honorably as I can.

Question: What Life Change brought with it a Rebirth?

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.

Missing the Mark

“You aim at the chopping block…not the wood.” —Annie Dillard

Whether we chop wood or not, we can appreciate Dillard’s point: Far too often I find myself focusing on the “wood,” the apparent problem, rather than what’s underneath. If I aim at the wood, it only splinters into a dozen small pieces. (And guess who picks up the pieces!)

If I focus only on what I can see in my new post-heart attack life, I will miss the point. I will make a mess. I will get frustrated. Part of what got me to this place was too little concern with FAITH and too much concern with increasing my bank balance, my book sales, my speaking engagements and trying to be "somebody." In other words I committed a whole host of "sins."

The original Greek word for sin means "missing the mark." It was an archery term. Boy did I miss the mark again and again. I hope my aim is improving.

Questions: How is your aim these days? Are you still missing the mark?

Trees, Rocks & Clouds

“ In the presence of nature a wild delight runs through the man in spite of real sorrows. —Ralph Waldo Emerson

For the last several entries I've been thanking people for the contributions they have made to my healing. The last few days I am going back more and more to parks and woods to tend to my heart. In the silence and safety that only a field, a stream, or a forest can provide, a different kind of deep healing naturally takes place.

As children many of us took to the woods and came to know the trees, rocks, and grassy knolls as spiritual mothers and fathers: as friends. When we became adults, though,many of us pulled away from the earth. I forgot the good heft of stone. I forgot that we were creatures of the land. I too often left the great rooms filled with sky, the chapels made of cedar and cypress, to seek out the sights and stimulation of the city. After my too long estrangement from the earth, I need to return to the natural wonders now and then, to purify my vision, to partake in the daily ceremonies nature conducts.

The Body Mysterious

“When something is mysterious, it doesn’t quite have a name.” —Ron Kurtz

In my body there are so many subtle feelings that can’t be described in words.This is especially true since my heart attack. They are nameless. I keep trying to write about what I am feeling and thinking but today I just can't.

All I can say is that my new/old body, the one with the long scar down my chest is as mysterious as a anything can be. However, today I don’t need to solve my inner mysteries any more than I need to “solve” a river or a tree. Just acknowledging the mystery, knowing of it, enlivens me and gives me faith that I’m on a great adventure.

That Which Doesn't Break

By the time a man or woman reaches the age of fifty or sixty we have been cut, scraped, bruised, operated on, shocked, loved, left and loved again so many times that it is a wonder of wonders that we're even here at all.

The body is so fragile and tenuous and yet those same cuts, operations, bruises and even beatings somehow forge a soul that can not only survive but thrive if they are counter-balanced by enough love, friendship, tenderness, time and support.

The cracking open of my chest and the quadruple by-pass is one of the most invasive things I've ever endured and yet now 15 weeks later I, like many of those who have experienced this operation, feel more blessed, more energized, and more connected to people,pets, things than ever before. But I got to also admit I hope I don't ever have to go through another.

Question: What nearly broke you but ultimately became a big part of your healing?

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'?

The Pool of Not-Knowing

Some mornings, like this one for instance, even though I see the bright sun already at work warming the South, I take a dive anyway into the sometimes dark pool of not knowing. As I swim or simply tread water I wonder where are the classmates, old loves and friends that vowed we'd always stay in touch. I wonder if they are doing well or poorly, alive, dead, married, divorced, with or without children.

I do not know where Robin is and if she ever returned to Jamaica after our journey there together a million years ago. I do not know where Marty, my assistant manager and young sweetheart is and what she loves doing today. I do not know where all those students that I taught over the last 30 years finally landed. Speaking of landing, I wonder if Laurel in The Flying Boy (that is not her real name) ever forgave me for flying I did at her expense.

The pool of not knowing is deep, sometimes cold, and as murky as my old memory. Was it Marty who went to Jamaica and Robin who was my assistant manager? Okay. My memory isn't quite that bad.

This little blurb is a shout out to anyone who has dove into this same pool and wondered, "Where did old John Lee go after leaving Florence, Tuscaloosa, Austin and other locals?"

Question: When you dive into the pool who do you wonder about?

The Spiritual Side

This morning I woke up thinking about the spiritual side of what I thought "should have been." By most people's standards and estimations I "should have been" last on their list and mine for a heart attack. Prior to it I ate right, exercised, kept my weight down, don't smoke or drink. And yet a heart attack I did have. What a God-given gift it has been. It changed my life for the better in more ways than a short blog (I promise to only write short ones knowing how busy you are)can capture.

Based on my education and upbringing I should have been a machinist like my father or a plumber like my brother and yet for some mysterious reason I became a writer. Writing has been my salvation, what keeps me semi-sane, though I often wish I had learned my father's trade and inherited his and my brother's ability to build, repair and make things but here I am writing this blog.

I should have married my high-school sweetheart (so many do) but instead I was blessed with some really wonderful people who were "girlfriends" and supremely blessed by The Great Spirit of Love to marry the most beautiful, kind, intelligent, and funny woman Susan my beloved.

Question: So do you often think about the spiritual side of what you thought should have been?

Break Time

Today I take a little break from any serious consideration of my mental,physical or spiritual state. I am thinking about the lighter part of my heart attack/by-pass debacle.

On the second day after surgery there I am lying in bed, unshaven, no bath in about four days, tubes in places I couldn't even see and I was pooped.

My dear wife Susan had gone to fetch herself something to eat, no nurses to attend to my needs, when I hear a gentle knock on my hospital door. I squeak out the words, "come in" and in walks one of the most beautiful girls in our high school graduation class of 1969. There she stood gorgeous as ever, slender as ever and as kind-hearted as ever. And I cannot, thanks to morphine, recall a word that was spoken between us. All I thought about while she stood there was that I must look terrible. Why couldn't she see me at my best--giving a lecture to 500 people, being a legend in my own mind, funny and full of life? Oh no. I had to be on the bed looking like death warmed over. Even heart-attack survivors have their vanity.

But I'm so glad she came, touched really that she came as did others with such tenderness in their eyes, beauty in their wrinkled but kind faces. I will never remember her words but will always treasure the gift of her presence.

Question: What moment were you seen at your worst and still felt loved?

Dreams

The Talmud, a commentary on the Hebrew Bible says, "An uninterpreted dream is like an unopened letter." Since my heart attack my dreams have been disturbing at worst and informative at best. I dream often of Austin, Tx. where I went through so many life changes. There I became a student,teacher, writer,therapist,friend and foe, lover and loved.

I have several major regrets when I think about or wake from a dream of Austin. I got disconnected from men and women who inspired me and changed me. During whatever time I have left I feel compelled to reconnect with those who it would not injure to do so, to paraphrase one the twelve steps.

I dream of those people as they were over 20 years ago. I try to interpret what their nocturnal appearances mean and mostly after much time and consideration I only arrive at the conclusion that they mean so much to me and time is wasting to get in touch.

Question: Who do you dream about that needs to be thanked, called, checked in with or apologized to?

The Divine Circle

I've been studying on the Divine Circularity of life now for some time especially since my heart attack. The 1970's singer Harry Chapin said it best before he departed and too soon to say the least, "...All my life's a circle, sunrise and sundown..." Emerson said in his essay Circles, "The eye is the first circle..."

I said, when I left Alabama for Austin, Texas nearly 30 years ago, I'd never live again in Alabama. I came back to the place I left. Today I spoke to a man I hadn't heard from in nearly 20 years who helped my career in ways I'll never be able to thank him for though I did try today. Back then I was so little known I wrote and spoke for free. Now thirty years later I write again for free and am very glad to be alive to do so. I heard from my high school sweetheart, the man who taught me to play guitar, the man who taught me how to teach--circle after circle after yet another circle.

Question: Do you see the circles in your own life and do you honor them or do you need a crisis to spur you to do so?

Admission

For nearly 25 years I have made my living as a public speaker/lecturer/teacher. For 25 years I have tried to pretend that I am a social person when I go out in public. Now my closest friends will not be the least shocked by this admission--I have long been plagued by a low-grade social phobia.

I get nervous, my hands get clammy and the back of my neck perspires. Early in my career some would say something like, "How do you go out to 40-50 cities a year and talk to all those people?" My standard answer was, "I have to totally re-wire myself and then when I get home I have wire myself back into my natural introverted state."

I realize now with wonderful 20/20 hindsight that re-wiring is largely the cause of my heart attack, well that and my genes. In the time that I have left I am no longer willing to try and be something I'm not. I am a dyed in the wool introvert who loves to write, read, and only go out occasionally and that is what I'm going to do.

Question: Who have you pretended to be or "re-wired" yourself to try to be?

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.

Wrestling Mortality

Mr. Mortality challenged me to a fight 12 weeks ago last night. He almost won. A strong wife, a good heart surgeon, and lots and lots of prayers beat the fellow back into his corner but he left, I hope, a lasting impression regarding wasting time.

Six months ago I felt like I had lots and lots of time as T.S. Elliot says in the poem The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, "...time for decisions and a hundred revisions..." or something to that effect. I thought if we lived in our small cottage in Mentone for four or five more years we would still have plenty of time to live elsewhere--you know where there are lots of book stores and great restaurants.

Years ago I used to have some of my clients and workshop participants do this exercise where I would say, "Imagine you only have 10 years to live. Where would you go? What would you do? Who would you take with you? What are you waiting on?

Mr. Mortality is not whispering this question in my ears. He is practically yelling it?

Questions: Where would you go? What would you do? Who would you take with you? What are you waiting on?

Giving Things Away

Black Elk, a medicine man of the Oglala Sioux nation and devout Catholic Christian convert spoke about "give-away" ceremonies. He explained that when you give away your prized possessions some sort of spiritual energy is returned to the giver.

Yesterday I gave away some things including the only constant home I have ever known. When I was growing up my restless father moved us around and then as an adult I continued the habit. But 20 years ago I bought this little slice of heaven that became an anchor for my flying boy soul and body.

While I didn't give it away permanently , which may explain why I didn't feel any energy return to me, I did give it for a year to a wonderful couple. While moving mine and Susan's things out and into our new rental home I had to wonder what my life would have been like if I had given away more things.

Question: What things, if given away, would give you a return of spirit?

Pre-Grieving

I have a couple of elderly friends that are so dear to me that I have mourned the loss of them before they depart. I have even written a "living eulogy" for them. I have believed in pre-grieving for nearly 20 years. I always wondered where I got the notion that is not very popular and to some even seems a bit on the morbid side.

Yesterday I was reading this great novel The Poet of Tolstoy Park by a fellow Alabamian Sonny Brewer and in it he quoted one of my favorite poets who I'd read 30 years ago. Rilke is a German who wrote in the early 1900's. "Be ahead of all parting, as though it were already behind you..."

I am moving out of the mountain cottage I've had for over 20 years. Due to my heart attack and having to cancel and cut back so much we are renting it to a wonderful couple. However, since I didn't see any of this coming I didn't follow my own belief of pre-grieving. I'm just grieving as I go.

Question: What or who or where do you need to "Be ahead of all parting"?

Some days the words come easy. Some days they don't come at all. Some days it is so easy to love and some days it is hard. Since my heart attack the words have been coming steadily even if not real creatively. And love and being loved is easier than it has ever been for me.

I wish it didn't take a crisis, an emergency room, a by-pass to make love easier. But that is what it took and I wouldn't take anything for it.

Question: What did it take to get you to take in the love that has been sent your way?

Expectations

Expectations are yet to be realized resentments. To ask for something--anything from another is one of the most courageous act we can perform. To let that act be linked to an expectation that they will do what you want, give you what you ask for is often the fastest way to feeling frustrated.

I found this out again first with the cardiologist in the emergency room 11 weeks ago and then again with my surgeon who performed the life-saving and life-changing by-pass surgery. I expected to be treated a certain way, spoken to a little more tenderly and cared for a bit more compassionately. None of which happened.

How much faster would I have healed if I could have attained the Nirvana like state, experienced Bliss or participated in the Grace of letting go of expectations? You got me?

Question: What expectations do you have of others that almost never are met?

Thinking out Loud

I was thinking today that the way my wife puts dishes in the dishwasher (which is not my way) no longer bothers me. The fact that she could care less if the bed is made or not is no longer a big deal.

The fact that the clover is in bloom in the pastures that I pass on my drive today from our home in Central Alabama to my studio in the mountains of Alabama is a big deal. The mountain air I'm breathing in right now as I write this very short blog is so sweet I don't have words to describe it.

My dear friend, poet Robert Bly, has a line in one his poems that goes something like this, "Think that someone is about to give you something large..." I've been given something extremely large--another chance at life, another day or two or perhaps lots of days to not let little things bother me like they once did and let the really important ones really sink in and be fully felt.

Question: What little things still bother you that you wish didn't?

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?

More Than 5 lbs.

I was told after my surgery not to pick up anything that weighed more than five pounds for the first eight to ten weeks. What I found out is that everything weighs more than five pounds--my laptop, garbage can, even my big black cat who kept getting in my recliner every time I got up is 16 pounds. I tried begging her to get off. I offered to pay her in catnip, she wouldn't do it. She looked at me like, "Do I look like a dog to you?"

You may be getting tired of this word "empathy" by now but when I had to ask small women at Wal-Mart to pick up boxes of cat litter for the same cat who could care less that she was in my seat, well let's just say I felt another wave of compassion for the elderly roll through my freshly cleaned out arteries.

Would your cat willingly give up its seat for you after surgery?

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?

To Be There or Not To Be There

During my period of recovery from my by-pass surgery I saw something that shocked me, disturbed me and enlightened me a little about being there and not being there for friends and family.

There were people I had known for two or more decades that I thought would have gotten in a car or a plane without hesitation--to come to our home in Mentone and cook meals, hold my hand and soothe my soul--that didn't come. Some didn't even call or email. Then there were people that I'd known maybe less than a year or three who not only called, they came, they cooked, and they touched my soul deeply.

During this time my own behavior or lack of was mirrored back to me. I thought about all the people that had serious operations, major losses and transitions and I had not been there for them. These friends of over 2 to 4 decades, family members I'd loved and who loved me had to negotiate these pains and problems while I was "too" busy being on the road and available for people I barely knew. After all it was my job, what I did, but I wish now with all my heart that I had been more balanced in my being there and not being there.

How are you doing with regards to being there for those who really matter?

Empathy: Part II

I had been cooped up in the house suffering from cabin fever after 4 weeks of recovering from the by-pass. My dear friend Bill Rutledge offered to drive me to Wal-mart to pick up my prescriptions. All day long I looked forward to his arrival and the drive out into the cool air and his company. By the time we got to the store all I could think about is this must be how many elderly folks feel when their son, daughter, niece, nephew or friend comes to take them to church or shopping--anywhere. This small thing was a huge event for me and perhaps it is for them as well.

I'm pretty sure Bill didn't recognize what an important service he was performing and I'm sure that you probably didn't either if you've ever done something so seemingly simple.

The great poet/country singer John Prine has a song about "old people" with a powerful line that goes something like, "...don't stop and stare. Say hello in there..."

Question? Have you said "hello in there?" lately?

Empathy

I define "empathy" this way: "I understand some of what you are going through because I've been through similar experiences myself."

On the 4th week after my quadruple by-pass, that I still can't believe I had, I very tentatively ventured out to get a haircut. The barber is about a ten minute drive from my our house. It was the first time I had driven in a little over a month. I was terrified. What if I had a wreck and the air bag popped out and hit my chest? What if I had a flat tire? What if some young thing ran me off the road? Then it hit me, this must be what the really elderly must feel every time they drive to Wal-Mart or to their pharmacy or wherever they have to go at the same speed I was traveling at--super slow.

That one short drive changed me. It opened my fragile heart just a little more. I went from being the person who was always impatient with the old person slowing down the rest of humanity (that is putting it mildly)and became a man who will never blow his horn (or at least will try really hard not to) at one of seniors again. I can empathize finally.

What has increased your ability to be more empathetic than you used to be?

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