“The greatest weapon against stress is our ability to choose one thought over another.”
William James
Woke up this morning to the sound of a marching band practicing down in the valley, probably on the local high school's football field just across the river.
That is, a band was playing down below the second time I woke up.
For, alas, Peg hadn't walked out the door for work ten minutes before I closed my eyes while reading the paper on my iPad and fell deeply, deeply asleep all over again. And not because I battled insomnia last night; in fact, I slept the sleep of the dead, from the time I dozed off on the couch with P while watching the Ken Burns country music documentary.
I think I know what's happening here. For the last couple months we've operated under the cloud of an increasingly worrisome medical situation, always present even during the best of times. There came a point when it could no longer be ignored or wished away, and last week there was testing we feared would reveal the worst. No news from the doctor on Friday after he had the results in hand only heightened the anxiety.
Then, yesterday, came the call: nothing revealed that would kill someone, but rather a bundle of painful but treatable conditions. Life would go on.
I was numb at the news, having spent so much time preparing for a different verdict. My head was filled with issues and tasks I hoped never to face, or at least not so soon, and every plan for the future seemed like farce. But at the same time, we've had our crises before, a whole lifetime of them, and I was mostly able to compartmentalize the worry and fear this time around so I could function. On the surface, except for a little churlishness at times, I seemed okay.
But despite William James's advice, above, we can only get so far in managing stress by choosing our thoughts. Even consigned to the back room of our subconscious, the stressor is still very much there, still churning around in a place where we may not be able to see or hear it, but we feel it all the same. And it manifests in a boiling stomach, an odd twitch, and an inability to cobble together a full night's sleep. A few weeks of that, followed by the resolution of the situation that created this constant angst, leads to the predictable experience of these last few hours, wanting to do little more than sleep and look out the window at those beautiful hills.
Nothing's certain, but it seems we will have a little more life together after all. I am still getting my arms around that realization, something I haven't let myself think about since before Easter. Having to cope with the prospect of losing this life we've built together has given this renewed season of hope a value I might not have felt otherwise. It's like the Buddhist teaching that led to the "WeCroak" app on my phone--I get a message several times a day reminding me that I'm going to die. The idea is that the constant, random reminders of our own mortality cause us to change how we see the things that challenge us in that moment, to gain perspective by realizing the smallness of our worries in the vastness of time, and ultimately to gain inner peace.
I never quite get to that last place, but I'll keep working at it. In the meantime the quotidian stressors of my life as a lawyer are beginning to assemble in my digital lobby--texts and emails and phone messages from clients who are immersed in their own crises and flailing for a lifeline. Time to go bring a little peace into those rooms.
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