Many people, to avoid thinking about painful or threatening things, keep themselves heroically, productively busy all day and go to bed exhausted.  They wake up early the next morning to work hard all day, every moment programmed down to the minute.  My father used to call this lifestyle “running a full flight pattern” and you can picture a harried, over-caffeinated air traffic controller doing the job of four, eyes darting constantly from the sky, to a computer screen, to the blinking dots on a wall map, to the sky, to the runways below, to his watch, to an open game of solitaire on another computer, to the coffee maker and so on.

Other people try to live in a more contemplative way, allowing time to think, feel, seek a little clarity in a world of chaos and senseless cruelty.  The usual example of a contemplative life is a monk in a monastery, though life in a monastery is highly programmed too.   I have always, from as far back as I can recall, preferred living an unharried life in this mercilessly harried world.  

I have to admit, I feel smugly superior to those running a full flight pattern, the coffee and cocaine achievers I’ve known, the exercise addicts, self-righteous compulsive workaholics of every stripe.  I am also compelled, of course, in this case in my disdain for the outer directed, those who march ahead according to the dictates of a brutal status quo keeping themselves constantly too busy to ever question the orders they are following or why they are running full tilt all the time.  

The most engaging part of a person is their inner life, what they are like when nobody is judging them.  To be allowed to see the vulnerable core of another person, to me, is the greatest gift a person can give you.  The trust and acceptance involved in this kind of sharing is, to me, the essence of love.

I am living in a fucking dream world, of course.  I spend an hour or two every day typing, putting my thoughts and feelings, and sometimes my dreams, in order, making them as clear as I can, to myself and to anyone who might stumble on them.  Even if you are well-paid to write, and I am not, man (or woman) does not live by writing alone.  It is a beautiful and indispensable thing, to be able to write clearly, but it is not something you can do all day.

Generally, when I am stressed I have always gone for a long walk, or a strenuous bike ride.  Or do some pushups, which always get my heart pounding and make me feel strong.  A brisk bit of exercise is a wonderful thing for calming the mind, getting some air flowing through the stuffy attic.  Currently I’m unable to walk more than a block or two, complications from knee replacement surgery almost a year ago.  Pushups lately are also off the menu, as the pain from my left synovium seems to have migrated up the entire left side of my body, into my left hand and left shoulder.  Physical exercise, an old standby, is not one of my stress relief options these days.

I always feel better when I spend an hour or two playing the guitar, or, in a pinch, the piano.  My left hand, while willing and able, is playing on borrowed time before the pain in the fingers make it impossible to continue.  The fingers get the unmistakable message in about five minutes.  Ordinarily, in my frustration, I’d throw myself on the ground and grunt out some push ups, but, currently, that would only lead to shoulder pain in addition to the hand and knee.

So what do we say about these constraints on a contemplative lifestyle?  I’m fucked, in a word.

Luckily for me, I have inner resources many do not.  Unluckily for me, you find the outer resources curtailed enough and your inner resources become overloaded. 

Then, in a word, you’re fucked.