Flipping Out and Pissing Mad

From Menletter June 2009

By Tim Baehr

Tomorrow (June 16) I will have surgery to repair and reattach a torn quadriceps tendon to my kneecap. The accident, on June 5, was as embarrassing as it was painful: a clumsy, pirouetting fall on the slippery lane of a bowling alley. The pain at the time was almost as bad as anything I had ever experienced. Since then, my right leg has been wrapped in a full-length immobilizer (lots of aggressive Velcro), and my right arm is in a hard splint (broke my wrist, too). I'm pain-free now but look forward to renewed pain and at least a month on crutches and couple months of rehab.

The occasion of the accident was a bowling party after the high-school graduation of a young friend, a godson of my wife. He felt terrible about it, and the accident threatened to cast a pall on what so far was a joyous week. I phoned Brandon from the hospital and said that he and his out-of-town family, especially the young ones, should party on. They had planned a movie night at the motel, and I didn't want them worrying or hanging crepe. I was going to be all right. Really.

Brandon knows a little about my practice of Zen meditation (spotty as it is sometimes), and he was impressed at my calm and perspective. He told his mom that if it had been him, he would have been "flipping out and pissing mad."

Well, I am flipping out and pissing mad, in my quiet way. I'm losing my normal routines the next couple of months. I can't ride my new bike until at least October. I'm going to have more pain, from both the surgery and the physical therapy afterward.

I don't know about other practitioners of meditation, but I think it's unreasonable to think I can just close my eyes and somehow enter into some kind of zone of tranquility during the worst of the pain and inconvenience. But sitting meditation, with its emphasis on what is happening right here and now, does serve a couple of important and related purposes.

First, having an ongoing practice builds up some "perspective muscles." Because everything, including life, is transitory, the unfortunate circumstances won't last forever (neither will more fortunate circumstances!). And at any given instant, right now for example, I'm not in either mental or physical pain, and I'm managing to do something I love (write essays). The accident no longer exists in the Universe except in memory. The future pain and inconvenience don't exist yet.

Second, the only and ultimate reality is the one that is happening right in this instant. No matter what's happening, good or bad, one way to make things worse is to regret the past or dread the future or wish things were different or think things ought to be different. It's very hard to live in the present, and I'm not very good at it. But when I don't, I can add suffering to pain (This shouldn't hurt!) or add gloom to anything good (I'm going to lose this someday!). Most of us are really skilled at screwing up the present with expectation, regret, and fear; a meditation practice can mitigate those things at least a little.

Update, June 26: Surgery's done, staples are out. Pain is gone. Long haul ahead with healing and physical therapy. I've really appreciated visits from the guys in my Wednesday lunch group. But my wife, Ann, is doing the bulk of the work taking care of me and the stuff in the house that I used to take care of. If you have any prayers or good thoughts, direct them to her; I'm OK.