There are so many things to do between work, home maintenance, schoolboy activities, community stuff. It’s sometimes hard to imagine getting it all done. I wonder about the choices I’ve made to get involved in so much. It just makes me feel so unreliable when I get sick and it all topples for a while. People count on me. Organizations seek out my leadership. How will the world survive? Very well, thank you.
I used to think my patients could only work with me, that I was the only one who really understood them and knew how to treat them. I used to be more involved with their overall care. I used to wonder how they would manage if I were to die. I was also involved in many large issues and efforts and thought of myself as indispensable to my community.
Then I got sick. Three years ago, I had to abdicate my self-coronated throne and leave life for a while. It was an incredible struggle as I worked to get better as fast as possible. I knew that so many people needed me. I couldn’t let them down.
The weeks and months wore on and I slowly discovered that I was not nearly as important as I thought. My patients found other practitioners or found that they actually could manage without my therapy. The PTA was limping along before I took over and continued limping along after I left. People either stepped in or things went undone. Either way, life went on. It was quite an ego smasher of a time.
I thought often about how we are like footprints in the sand. Not like that old, worn out Jesus story, but more like the actual print in the sand. Our presence is so temporary and obvious for a time. When we leave or die, our presence fades and washes away, eventually leaving no trace. it made me question life’s purpose.
Our attachment to “leaving a mark” is all about making sure that our footprint stays clear for all to see and even to trip over. It’s unbearable for us to think that we could be forgotten or unacknowledged for having lived. It’s too hard to consider that generations will go by and all but a few will become completely lost among the millions of names in the graveyards of the world.
As I was in vacate mode without the vacation, I realized that I could see all of this as a living tragedy or I could see it as a liberation. This choice showed up over and over again as time went on and as I couldn’t resume my former life. I had to face the fact that whatever importance I held for people or organizations, I was not so important that they couldn’t live without me. Not that I would ever say that, but deep inside I think that’s what I really wanted to believe. I think I wanted to believe that something or someone would really fall apart without me and that I had to heal for their sake. I was THAT important.
But – no.
Everyone carried on. Space was filled. Arrangements were made. Ego smashed.
Take a breath. Start again. Maybe a little lighter this time. Maybe a little more free of care. There is a focus on healing now that is more liberating as I get to discover new dimensions, new corners of me I didn’t know were there. It’s more fun this way.
But what’s the purpose of life then? Well, I think it is simply to follow our nature, whatever that may be. A tree does not seek anything but to be a tree. It stays for a time until it’s ready to fall over and become food for the rest of the earth around it. It doesn’t need to leave a mark. It is not attached to how other trees see it. It just stands there and waves in the wind, reaches for the sun, and bears its own fruit- until it doesn’t anymore. Kind of simple.
After the most recent brush with death, I came back not wishing to leave a mark really quickly before I die. Instead I began feverishly getting rid of things, working to be sure my family is taken care of if I should go a little sooner than I expect and to disappear quietly without a trace. I’ve saved so many things to mark my life; journals, art, books, junk. In the face of death, it’s all just a lot of junk for someone else to clean up.
I want to live more like the zen monks who did their level best to simply disappear without a trace and to live without attachment to their place in the world. Their collective mark is felt by those of us who yearn for a simpler life where we chop wood and carry water and lie in the grass watching clouds go by. It’s not a tragic life. It’s a poignant life. And then it’s not. Simple.
