Working the Night Shift

I wake up this morning with a sinus headache. Last night was difficult. Early on I woke up terrified—some dream about war and being in a terrible situation of danger. It took me several moments to fight my way back to the surface of consciousness and realize I had been dreaming. I settled back into sleep making a note to myself to remember the dream to puzzle it out in the morning. Of course, now I have no memory of what it was about.

Then I woke at 3:30 ruminating about all the unfinished tasks of my life. Like monsters in a movie with low production values, usually I can see they are just plastic toys being pushed around by the fingers of the animators. But in the unfocused dark of the early morning, the hidden animators of my brain run the show and the monsters loom large. So I work helplessly on suspected botched delivery dates and work on potential schedule dis-coordinations. I am worried that there will be difficulty.

Difficulty is almost always worse in advance. I mean sometimes things can be really hard and challenging, but in the moment, hard and challenging is often not a problem. It’s just hard and challenging. We human beings are actually creative, resourceful and whole. There is a part of all of us that even enjoys a challenges and difficulties. Challenges reveal strengths we did not know we had and calls beyond our daydreams of incompetence and overwhelm to the dynamic and reciprocal world that contains both success and failure as part the path forward.

Somewhere along the way we internalized the idea that there is one right answer and we must find it—or else. Success is good. Failure is bad. Someone else is grading the exam and making the final judgment. Good luck. Study hard and don’t make any mistakes. It’s an exhausting perspective and actually not true. (Of course telling that to your mind at 3:30 a.m. probably won’t have much impact, but still…)

It turns out that there are many right answers to every question and decision. Not only that, but usually the question or choice being posed is only one perspective on a situation that has many perspectives. I suppose simplification is necessary to avoid endless paralysis by analysis, but it also dangerously reduces the amount of information and viewpoints available. I heard a politician on the radio yesterday and he had an astonishing knack for boiling situations down to a clear choice of two alternatives with one of them being so clearly superior to the other than action was almost inevitable. I enjoyed his air of certainty but was suspicious of his forced-choice methodology.

A friend of mine has come down with some complications from Lyme disease that are quite serious. It’s very likely that his symptoms will all clear up. But it’s not certain that they will and even if they do, it’s not certain when they will. Are we talking two weeks or six months? He doesn’t know but when I spoke to him, he reported that his life was going on quite well. He was appropriately concerned about his condition, but was also feeling that, in the moment, he’s just has the symptoms he has.

Life is just a series of problems. I recently heard of a psychologist who defines good mental health as ‘One problem after another.’ With the alternative being ‘The same problem over and over.’ This is catchy and insightful, but as a good Zen teacher I have to report that, when we get down to what is really going on, it is the same problem over and over. And this is not a problem.

We each have our particular issues and neuroses. Some of us suffer from loneliness, some from anxiety, some from anger, some from fear. Life can be unbearable at times. But I have come to believe that even these familiar and difficult companions are part of the path and meaning of our lives.

Emerson put it this way: There is a time in every man’s education when…he must take himself for better, for worse, as his portion; that though the wide universe if full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but through his toil bestowed on that plot of ground which is given to him to till. [of course this applies to women and gender queer folks of all pronoun choices]

So the things that come up again and again are the plot of ground which we are given to cultivate. And, as Emerson points out, we are required to do some work—to meet ourselves, to work with the challenges of our lives as best we can.

The good news is that failure is not a problem, in fact failure is the only way forward. Life offers a panoply of choices—some may work better than others, but there are infinite choices—all leading us forward into our life.

So, onward into the messy and rewarding busyness of life. Get it right. Get it wrong. Play in the mud then wash yourself off. It’s really OK.