It's not so much that someone is going to enter my body in an effort to improve my health prospects. I am a great believer in the anesthesiologist and his/her ability to ship me off to la-la land while the doctor plies his trade and removes a node on the right lung.
No, the wind that rattles the shutters on this house is the post-op pain and healing and being in an even deeper thrall to this aging body. Two things: 1. It's b-o-r-r-r-i-n-g and 2. I really don't see getting hurt as a desirable prospect ... a prospect I might once have balanced favorably against the prospect of getting somehow "better." A part of me carps, "better than fucking what?"
I'll do it, of course. I'm in too deep now. But I am thinking increasingly of swearing off both doctors and hospitals. It's too late. Let it ride. It's more peaceful that way.
The chickadees skitter from snowy perch to cleared sidewalks below and return to their snowy perch on the bushes inside of which they make a home. That's interesting. The Canada geese honk on their blue-sky highway. That's interesting... not b-o-r-r-r-i-n-g like analyses of "denial" or "fear of death" or other sage applications.
I do want to remember to say thank you to the doctors and other personnel attending to my physical being before the operation: Perhaps that will take some of the curse off my crabby behavior afterwards. Snarky... that's the word I'm after.
I dunno, pain and inconvenience, even dependency and waiting for someone to do what you can't, it all sucks. But it also gets you out of a lotta stuff. You can spend the day watching chickadees and nobody will nag you about what you didn't do. So i say suck it up ranger, there's always an upside.
ReplyDeleteInonoe,
ReplyDeleteIt's a phrase that got on me recently when posed with difficult questions or koans in life. A while back the various gurus I studied with suggested approximately that when facing difficult questions, one may resort till the Dharma Lotus Flower teaching in tackling the really mean challenges. Somewhere close enough, the Licchavi bodhisattva Vimalakirti suggested approximately that when in fear of life, one may resort to the magnamity of the Tathagatha. Maybe Genkaku was already a Buddha from an past eon, still, assuming that there are ordinariness in one and all, a good prayer like "May one and all be well, happy, safe, and peaceful" is what came across in the mind as a meek, half-hearted yet genuine effort.
I liked Genkaku's stories because he saw World War II, after two of my grandparents passed away at 84 and 90 respectively in the recent two years, what got me quite perplexed was how the founding dictator-ish father Lee Kuan Yew of Singapore is still around at 92 years old after celebrating his birthday two months back. I kept telling my own elders who were in their 70s or younger, if the 92 year old is still holding out, now Genkaku you still have a long way ahead perhaps. My only surviving grandmother as well as your own mothers, God knows what kept them going on and on, maybe I did, maybe you did, maybe we did.
The Buddha spoke about an escape, some escape, the somewhat agnostic Lee Kuan Yew suggested that nobody ever came back and told us that the escape, or perhaps what is beyond, nobody ever came back and told us it was really there.
The other leader of Singapore, a Emeritus Minister Goh Chok Tong just had his surgery days back addressing prostrate cancer, it got better claims the doctors, I am pretty sure many including Genkaku too will too i.e. get better, Goh is only 70ish iirc, now this may sound a little mean, still, there are much older cancer patients on this world. - let these oldest fogies go first properly, perhaps - or at least give your mothers another call if you have yet. :)
I don't know mothers still I know sons.
I don't understand cancers still I understand fears.
*Take care get well soon..*
Good luck tomorrow, Adam -- smooth sailing. You are cherished.
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