Fourth Form of Madness

Once there was monk crossing a courtyard in the centre of a town.  The town’s policeman spied the monk crossing the courtyard and as a social courtesy asked him where he was going.  The monk replied “I don’t know”.  This angered the policeman as he felt the monk did not think him worthy of telling him where he was going.  So the policeman asked the monk again “Where are you going?”.  The monk replied again “I don’t know”.  By now the policeman was furious and demanded to know where the monk was going.  For a third time the monk replied “I don’t know”.  With that the policeman arrested the monk and took him to the police station.  At the police station the policeman said to the monk, “Tell me now where you were going”, to which the monk replied “I did. I didn’t know where I was going.  I thought I was going to the market but I ended up here.  So you see, I really didn’t know where I was going”.

I love this story.  I read it many years ago but it still holds true today.  You can plan and schedule and diarise all you want, but no-one ultimately knows what is going to happen in life and no-one has any control over the journey.  Best to be like the monk and acknowledge this gracefully as you go about your business of living.

I had a beautiful reminder of this only just last night.  My husband and I set out for dinner with friends and it ended up with me spending 4.5 hrs in the emergency department of a local public hospital.  Everything had gone just as expected.  We all enjoyed a curry and a few drinks, a few laughs.  We were post dinner and gathered in the kitchen solving all the problems of the world when the brother of our host came in feeling terribly unwell.  He clearly didn’t look healthy, he was clammy to touch, pale and his heart was racing.  He asked if he could stay with us as he didn’t want to be alone in his house.

Soon it became clear that he really should be checked out medically.  So off we trundled, the ever caring wife of the host couple, me and brother in tow.  The emergency department reception was surprising vacant and silent and soon pale and shaky brother is taken behind the automatic opening and closing doors into the sterile chaos that is the emergency department.  Meanwhile we caught up on our gossip magazines from 2011 and eyed off the only copy of Better Homes and Garden that another lady in the waiting room had.

Shortly after we were hustled into a curtained cubicle to wait with the brother who then went through blood tests, an ECG and X-ray and other various medical checks.  Being in this curtained off space was like being in a box.  We could hear and sense people all around us but we couldn’t see them.  As we sat there, hour after hour, the noise and commotion outside the curtain became louder and louder.  Doctors came in, doctors went out.  Nurses came in, nurses went out.

The patients in the next cubicles changed over several times during our visit.  One, I am guessing, was a teenage girl that had just suffered a major fit.  Apparently she had only just got over another major fit two weeks ago and had only just returned to school 2 days ago.  She was drugged out and had minimal responses.  As I sat there wondering if it was a crime to use my i-phone in emergency, I heard her mumble something to her mother.  Her mother replied “No it’s okay no one saw love, you were in your room”.  As I looked down at my i-phone a tear fell to its screen.  I put my phone in my pocket and started concentrating on my grateful list.

About a month ago I went to lunch with a friend.  Over a curry (um that’s a reoccurring theme) and a wine, I confided to my friend that I was living in so much fear about various things and negativity.  Her eloquent and useful response was “You need to practice more gratefulness and trust – those two things will smash through fear”.  Well she certainly was onto something.  Since that lunch I have been starting my day, usually as I drive to the train station, going through the things that I am grateful for.  The first time I did the list I was surprised at how many things there were on my list.  This had should a transformative effort on me.  To focus on the positive rather than the negative, that I have kept it up every day since.  It’s just like my asana practice now, if I don’t do it daily something feels a little missing from the day.  This simple act of just running over mentally all the things I am grateful for has made me feel more positive in general, which has made me feel more friendly towards others, which in turn has made them more friendly and co-operative towards me.  Why don’t they teach this stuff in school? 🙂

Anyway after many tests later, shaky and clammy brother is thankfully advised he is not having a stroke or heart attack.  I’m sure that is going to make his grateful list for sometime to come.  We finally get out of there just as things are reaching their crescent of babies screaming and various people yelling about various things.  Later as I fall into bed well after midnight and in the knowledge that I have to be up at 6.30am, I reflect on the evenings events and conclude, I never thought the evening was going to end up being spent mainly in the emergency department.  Yet strangely it feels like it worked out just the way it was meant to and just the way it always was going to ………regardless of my input.  And I am grateful for that.