Imperfectly Zen

Recently a friend asked me how I've dealt with the 48-hour-cycle of depression I've had for some time now ~ good day/bad day.  I had to tell her I haven't conquered it, though it went to rest during these last two months that included two cataract surgeries, a heart cath (without anesthetic), and frightening shortness of breath caused (it turned out) by a major UTI, which entailed a six-day hospital stay.

The hospital stay in the nice new Heart Hospital was actually the nearest thing to a vacation I've had in a long time; I just put it in there to impress you. The cycling depression didn't bother me much during that busy time.  Inbetween being tested this way and that I enjoyed sitting at the window and watching the Life Flight helicopters come in.  I thought a lot about sudden death. I also thought about depression as a spiritual ailment.

My first inkling of this idea was from Parker Palmer many years ago, his little book, Listen to Your Life,which has become a classic. There he talks about his own disabling major depression, how he learned through it that the way he was living and working was not the life for him.  He had not found his own life and work.

The black cat of depression

I think the word "work" there is important.  It can be hard to do any kind of work when you're really depressed. But we all need to feel useful, even when it's all we can do to stay alive. The women's sitting group that meets in my home has given me work to do, in the sense that there is something I do for other people on schedule.  It was frightening to undertake it.  It has helped to understand that leading the group is not about me.  I'm not giving a performance, I don't have to shine. It's about them - giving them a chance to meditate with friends, to hear the dharma, to talk about their own spiritual lives.  In Zen terms, I took my ego out of it.

I've found that the best way to put aside the dark thoughts and feelings that come unbidden to people with depressive disorders is always just to do the job in front of me (though sometimes intellectual tasks are beyond me).  One of the women talked about this last week, how she moves through her own unwelcome thoughts when she's cooking by putting her mind back on the task.  I've found this is a really good idea when I'm trying to chop carrots - not my fingers.


For me, another key to doing anything is that I don't do it perfectly.  My house is never perfectly clean (oh, I hear my Mother turning over in her grave).  When my group meets, I sometimes forget to put the tea water on. Last time I forgot about the chants altogether until after we got our tea, and so had the wonderful woman who helps me set up.  So we did a chant at the end.  Call it Imperfect Zen.

It happens that leading and teaching on this small scale are part of my way, and they are not for most people, depressed or not.  But there are opportunities to give to and serve the world in every single life. They are there even when we are crippled by depression. When you go to the grocery store, you can smile at the older child who isn't getting the attention the baby gets.  You can let someone cut in ahead of you on your way home. You can give yourself time to walk around the block, a change of air.  You can share a funny dog video on Facebook.  At your worst, you can "like" a friend's post.

It's the holiday season - you can wear a Christmas sweater - you can't possibly look as bad in it as that poor cat.  You can call someone and not talk about how bad you feel, but instead ask how she's doing.  If you're on the phone, not on Skype, you don't need to wear a Christmas sweater, but can stay in your gloomiest bathrobe.  Nobody needs to know.  No matter how the call feels, congratulate yourself after you hang up. You're a nice person.  It was good of you to try.

On Emptiness

We had a day planned here on the winding drive.  The water was going to be out as they finally fix the line, so we had spare buckets and pitchers lined up.  Tom was going to make bean soup with ham hocks, which is something of an endeavor the way we do it. Greg was coming over to help Tom mount the new house numbers, a project that has taken weeks or years to come to fruit, the way things usually are around here.

Then Tom discovered that they did indeed shut off the water at exactly 8:30, just as the announcement said.  And he hadn't put aside water for the bean soup endeavor, thinking they wouldn't be punctual this one time. Then Greg called with a fever, not coming today.  Suddenly before us was a day with no big plans. It interested me, how empty it felt. It was as if the day we'd imagined had a certain reality, occupied space in our minds.

It made me think of how I labored to finish my PhD program - the hard part, the dissertation and defense - though I now knew I did not want a career in academia, just shoot me instead.  There was a certain reason to it -to be ABD is to announce yourself as a failure - better not to even start the program, I thought.  But there was another reason, I think now; I could see the span of time before me filled with a certain something, even if it was only a form of acute suffering. If I had quit, never mind what my father would have said about quitters, (oh, don't go there) I would be faced with - this empty space.

Empty of what?  My thoughts about it, the mental structure I carried around. Tell me those mental emissions are not "real," I know that. I also know they are. They are like the four tote boxes in our front closet full of various clothes I wasn't wearing at the time we moved, but valued, and might fit back into some day, and didn't want to get rid of. Those boxes don't exactly exist behind the closed sliding doors; but they do.  And in fact, they exist in my mind, too, cluttering me up, alongside ideas about 10,000 things I ought to do, how one ought to live, etcetera ad nauseum.

Well, I thought it was interesting, that's all - the space these cancellations left in our collective mind around here. It made me think, too, about how I would live if I knew I didn't have that apparently endless stream of years in front of me until, maybe, I die.  That A Year to Live idea. If I'd known I would die a year later, I certainly would not have bent myself to that dissertation.  During those stressful years the cancer began growing that was discovered two years after my graduation.

There is the melancholy joy of this time of year, too. Ohio is at its most beautiful in the fall, many kinds of maple turning many colors, the gingkos along High Street yellow fans, the brown oak leaves piling in drifts in the gutters. The sun in and out, which makes each moment of sunlight precious. 

Each day you know this is the last day of its kind. Tomorrow, fewer leaves, less color.  In two weeks we'll be into the drab, cold days of November, which are garlanded in the cheap Mardi Gras beads of the consumer holiday frenzy of eating, drinking, spending.  However, of course, that does not exist right now, except in my fertile mind.

Christmas Gift Stress

So buying gifts is not fun?  That's what a friend of mine wrote on facebook recently.  For her, buying gifts for, maybe, a long list of people she doesn't want to give to, is a chore. Hmm.

I just finished making an Amazon gift order from the warm coziness of my house and fleece robe - it is 8 degrees out right now, not what I had planned for mid-December.  But the sky is French Blue.  Next I will work on cultivating the attitude that I have shown my love, and if someone doesn't like or use these rather inventive gifts, no problem.

In fact, that would be a good thing to write on gift cards, wouldn't it?  "This gift is not meant to fulfill your secret dreams or make you happy, but to express my affection."  Taking this one step further, you could just buy someone hard to please a a flock of chicks ($20) or a goat ($120 or $10 a share) from Heifer.  I consider this the ideal gift, for it goes to someone else far away, making no demands on the recipient; size, color, taste are not considerations; and it helps keep poor people alive and earning.

As must be plain, I have been giving gifts - sometimes things I made - for many, many years, often to people who did not express enough gratitude, if I say so myself.  And - full disclosure - people who seemed puzzled and disappointed at a gift from Heifer.

That kind of response probably means the individual really wanted a remote-control Devil Duck or a cowled cashmere sweater, but how were you to know?  I feel that people in general don't understand that one is supposed to appreciate.  To say with enthusiasm, "I love it - what is it?"