So what the heck IS the Convoy of Zen?
In my day job, I am a high school history teacher—and my
students know I am a beast about precision of language, which is kind of funny
since I am being pretty free in my application of the word “Zen”.
When I reference Zen I mean the fruits of traditional Zen
meditative practices: peace, thoughtfulness, working with intention, acceptance
of the present moment. In my usage, zen
(lower case) is mental space, freedom from anxiety—basically the opposite of my
normal spastic freak-out default mode. I
have zero success meditating (Z.E.R.O.—my internal voice Never. Shuts. Up.),
but the simplicity and “being” of Zen practice make sense to me within the
framework of the religious tradition I live by (Catholic—I have not had much
success with Catholic meditative practices, either, and by not much I mean
super close to Z.E.R.O. Urp.).
*Zen = Not Perpetual Freak-out Mode*
In my one brief and awkward stint with
therapy the counselor suggested exploring mindfulness, and I scoffed pretty
massively. SCOFFORAMBA galore. We were in the thick of medical things then; now I get that I needed a little space outside of day to day medical crises to realize that accepting things and just working through that acceptance is probably healthier than the denial/rage/spastic creativity approach I tended to take to deal with the marathon of aggressive low grade brain tumors...
(“You need a song about
chemo? I CAN WRITE YOU A SILLY SONG ABOUT CHEMO, GIVE ME THIRTY SECONDS”. We
were legit the Village People of the oncology clinic, silly hats, hand motions,
and all).
But in the middle of everything, I could not do mindfulness. I wanted things to be fixed/better/not a catastrophe every other second. That is
what it is.
(Side note, therapy is a super useful thing and I really
should have kept going more than like, 3 times. Some things really require professional help. I
will um, add that to the zen list. Yes. Ergh....)
---------->ANYWAY, keeping up the near frenzied holding-it-togetherness of
those years proved unsustainable once the dust settled and I had to actually
process “What the Heck Happened Here?” and more importantly, “Now What?”
I also tell my students that
history rarely works as a strict chronology. Timelines are a tool, but one
little line with date dots does not a history show. History is much more of a
tapestry or web, interconnected fibers crossing and recrossing and affecting
the paths of other fibers…
My own zen trek is kind of like
that. A little all over the place, but ultimately moving forward, hopefully.
Remember those old Family Circus
comics where the kids would march all over the neighborhood and leave a little
dotted line trail criss-crossing everywhere behind them? THAT is what it’s
like.
So as I try to put all this into
words, I ask for patience and an awareness of the tangly wiggly all over the
place-ness of how I am figuring this out. Ideas overlap. Some things I have
discovered very recently have been so helpful I WISH I had started them
earlier, so I will reference them earlier (Bullet Journal, I’m looking at
you). Some things will take longer to
flesh out.
I make zero claim to having any deep insights—I feel a little
like an ancient explorer discovering a new world in which an awful lot of
people already live. Uh, yeah. “Discovery”.
If you already live on the islands of zen I am just learning
about, Hello! Glad to finally get here! Let’s have an umbrella drink and enjoy
the possibility of sunshine! If not, I hope you enjoy the exploration, too.
Movin’ right along really is better with friends. Thanks for
jumping in the figurative Studebaker and coming along for the ride.
Serious Side Note: If you are
seriously depressed, or really struggling with getting through each day, please
talk to a doctor. Please talk until a
doctor can HEAR you and help you figure out a plan. These ideas here might be
helpful, but a lot of them only helped me AFTER I talked to my doctor. That is another story for another time…but take
care of you.
