November 4, 2010

Today was a total rest day. At 10 o’clock in the evening I have not been out of bed today except to take a warm, delicious bath.

Somewhat against my will, I realized that rest days must be built into my life on a far more regular basis. There was a time when I consistently had three rest days a month, although resting meant staying in bed only until 3 pm. I pretty much gave up this practice when I went to live in the trailer in the southern United States. When I returned I gave it up entirely.

Now that I have learned that stress is a major part of the feedback loop that leads to intractable pain, I have begun to review my history in terms of stress. It’s not exactly a point of view that I prefer to look from. Generally I prefer to look at my life in terms of accomplishments or transformations or even neighbourhoods and spiritual passages. However, it seems that there has been a certain amount of denial on my part of the factors that have worn down my physical body and occasionally my will power as well.

In the hospital when they were putting in the PICC line, I was struck by how my veins shut, seemingly in an effort to prevent the catheter from passing through them. This was considered to be somewhat remarkable to the radiologist who was performing the procedure. I also noticed months before I ended up in the hospital how frequently my leg muscles were tight or how difficult it was to release my bladder or how frequently some other part of my body like my neck would be stiff and tight. Looking back I realize there were plenty of signs that I was stressed – lots of straightforward signs of wear, tear and exhaustion.

I recall in January sitting for hours in front of my computer not being able to muster the willpower to do more than play Freecell even though I had hours of work to complete. Eventually I realized that this was not so much procrastination as emotional and physical fatigue. Even so, I did not know how or was somehow unwilling to respond sufficiently to my own stress.

The entire story of seven months, even 9 months if you include our preparation, of the World Peace Tour could be written as a story of stress. It doesn’t seem right or necessary at this time to go into a great deal of detail. Suffice it to say that there were layers of financial burdens that we struggled under as well as a myriad of personal conflicts to work out both before and during the entire trip. Added to this was the global economic crash that set in the same week that we left. We had the mechanical difficulties, health difficulties and a number of the contracts that I thought I would have to rely on as sources of connections and financial stability fell apart soon after our departure.

We made it through brilliantly and learned a great deal along the way. In the subsequent months we learned even more as we discussed our tour with others and reviewed our experiences. At the same time the stress never let up. Understandings and commitments broke down leading to loss of home and loss of much of the photographic and video record of our journey.

By September I was rebuilding my life in terms of home, money, personal assistants and even in some respects my very identity.

I can look back on this time as a huge opening as I found a home, a neighbourhood, a staff team and way of living economically which is by and large working beautifully. I can also look ¬at the same time period as a relentless series of crises that took their toll. For example, throughout exactly the same time – November 2008-September 2009 – my swallowing became compromised, my diet became limited, my bladder was stressed with stones, I developed back pain, my funding for personal assistants was nearly taken away from me, I had to train a new staff team and learn a completely new payroll system as well as advocate for limited time to travel out of the country. I was seemingly unable to stop and breathe as each and every one of these problems had to be addressed as a crisis.

So, now I suppose I have a little bit of breathing space given to me by the ultimate crisis of no longer being able to sit up. I get to lie down and look at how can I more effectively get outside of the stress zone and create a peaceful environment for myself, especially my body.

I had an insight this morning when I was talking with a few of my Wisdom buddies (Landmark Education). I realized that I had lived my life as a skilled manager of my body. I have not actually been present to loving and enjoying my physical self. There have been moments of course – very little in life is black and white. There have been moments of hot tubs, long walks in beautiful places, cuddling up with someone, etc. But by and large these have not been frequent; neither have they been my focus. I generally opted to maximize my social and community participation and did not consider to any great extent my personal experience of life.

Don’t’ get me wrong - I don’t feel deprived. I have clearly benefitted and utterly enjoyed the extensive amount of travel and participation that were part of Cycle 2. No, this is more of a realization that there is another dimension to life that I have not made available to myself.

One of the gentlemen that came to my birthday party is a clown and a house painter. He was telling me about how he actually mixes the colours of the paint which he uses when his contractors give him the opportunity. He clearly takes pride in creating subtle shifts in his hues and tints. I realize that there are several areas of pleasure that are already open to me where depth of exploration is possible. I paint and I can learn about and experiment with colour much more. I listen moment by moment to rich sounds in my neighbourhood and I can easily enhance these experiences if I merely take some time to do it. What about other physical experiences? Probably there are people in my life who would support me to explore these dimensions as well.