Life on the Rocks

I have always been repelled by repetition. I think this may be the central curse of attention deficit disorder. Newness is the fuel that propels me, and I bore easily. For this reason, I avoid routines of any kind, including exercise routines. While others can run on a treadmill for an hour, I want to run away screaming from this mental torture machine after about 5 minutes.

As you can imagine, the inability to maintain routines can be a handicap. Everywhere I look, there are cycles of repetition: day-night, seed-tree, butterfly-caterpillar, ashes to ashes. Even the life of a star, from the initial fusion reaction that lights it on fire, to the super-nova explosion that marks its final breath, is a cycle. So cycles are an indelible part of our existence. Denying them is like holding your breath and refusing to let it go. It doesn’t work.

On a recent weekend, with my wife out of town, I found myself stranded alone in a camping trailer for three days straight... in the middle of nowhere, with nothing to do. A friend allowed me to park my camper on his land. I had chosen a beautiful grassy hill surrounded by mature trees. Quite idyllic, serene, and isolated. At first, I made do with reading and surfing the internet. But eventually, my insides were screaming to do SOMETHING. I felt like a just-caught fish flopping on the deck of a boat. So I set out to go for a jog. Unfortunately, there was nowhere to run, other than around the grassy field that my trailer was parked on. The lap was about 1/4 mile. Almost at the moment I started my run, I wanted to quit. Run around in circles in the hot, bug infested, humid sun?! No thanks. I ran three laps and then retreated, dejected and sweaty, to my trailer. And I didn’t pass up the excellent opportunity to shame myself for my lack of endurance, tenacity, and will power. “You’re an idiot,” I thought, “Three pathetic laps?!”

The next day, I was faced with the same dilemma. Somehow, I tricked myself into putting on my shorts and running shoes. One of the things I struggle with when running laps (or doing a set of pushups, or doing anything involving repetition) is keeping count. I get bored, and my mind moves on, leaving the count in the dust. So I’m never sure if I’ve done too few or too many laps - yet another reason to hate running in circles. As I warmed up with a halfhearted, shuffling lap, I noticed a pile of gravel in the corner of the field. On a whim, I picked up five small rocks in each hand, thinking maybe I can keep track of how many circles I’d run by using these rocks. I’d start with ten, and throw one on the pile each time I ran by. Worth a try.

8 laps later, I noticed one last rock in each hand. Somehow, I had run two miles, and had almost not noticed the pain. In fact, I found myself clinging to these last rocks. I DIDN’T WANT THE RUN TO END. For the last twenty minutes, I had allowed my mind to roam free, doing its thing, while the rocks kept count. In fact, I had mentally composed an entire blog article (this one) during the time that had elapsed.

How had this shift in perspective happened? I was determined to find out. I repeated this experiment three more times over the next few days. It’s not easy to leave an air conditioned trailer and run in the hot sun when no one is forcing you to. But I did it. And each time, it got easier. I’d start out each run thinking about the painful 20 minutes I had ahead of me. And each time, as the rocks dwindled in my hands, I felt my running time getting more and more precious. This cycle happened without fail. Laps 1-3 were painful and slow; laps 4-6 felt neutral; laps 7-8 began to flow, with my posture becoming more upright, and my stride becoming more confident; laps 9-10 were triumphant victory laps, and I gripped the stones firmly. I started to enjoy each pounding steps, feeling the grass crush under my heel as I landed and the dirt fly out as I pushed off my toes. And when I tossed the final rock back on the pile, I MISSED IT. All of it... the feel of the rocks in my hands, the thump-thump-thump of my feet on the tall grass, the green leaves that sped by just overhead, the rhythm of my breath, the blindingly bright sun in my eyes when I rounded one hilly corner, the sweat dripping off my chin, and even the biting fly that would kamikaze dive into my hair every time I came around the other corner.

What are you running from?

I was making small talk with a patient years ago while I worked, and the subject of my trail running came up. I explained to the young man that I loved running more than just about anything. I told him that I often ran for hours on the forest trails near my home in Memphis, TN. The patient, a thin, serene, Indian man, listened for a few minutes and then asked me with a genuinely curious tone, “Doctor, what are you running from?” He had no way of knowing that I was in the middle of a contentious divorce at the time, and was struggling to sleep through the night. Getting up at 5 am in a cold sweat almost every night, I had gotten in the habit of putting my running shoes on and walking out the front door almost automatically.

Pan forward ten years, I was once again waking up in the early hours with the sensation of terror or foreboding. After one of these episodes, my wife asked me a slightly different version of the same question: “What exactly is it that you are so afraid of? The answer that came up surprised me.

I felt afraid of: decay, and that the cycle will come to an end without me finding answers, a reason for being. I am afraid that my life will end without a PURPOSE. I wasn’t afraid of death. I was afraid that I was the servant in Jesus’ parable of the talents that returns to his master with the same single talent he was given after burying it to keep from losing it. At the same time I was resistant to the rituals and routines that I could harness to build many talents from one, I was afraid of stepping out into the unknown and risking losing my talent.

I was terrified of dying without having something to lose, but even more fearful of having something worth keeping.

Pebbles in an Hourglass

While running laps around my friend Joe’s pasture, I reflected on how the day before, making it through three laps was painfully boring and I couldn’t think of anything but when it was going to be over. And how today, a simple shift in perspective had transformed the experience. How the simple act of gripping 10 pebbles in my fists and throwing one back on the pile each lap had made me - almost - not want the experience to end. What changed? Was it awareness of the evanescence of life and the finality of death, the very thing that causes my night terrors and makes me live in fear of loss and injury every day? Is this what makes me pull up short and hold back each time each time I am confronted with a life challenge? To date, my life plan had been to come in second or third, not stand out, not risk losing my “talent.” Maybe the pebbles in my hands made me realize what stage of the game I was in. Indeed, my experience with the rocks mirrored the way I lived life. Early on, I hold back, not wanting to risk running out of steam, fearing the pain that is ahead if I push my limits. And when I know I am close to the end of the run, I speed up! I make a mental shift: I only have two rocks left, so I better make them count!

Life is No Trail (or Trial) Run

The problem with living one’s actual life this way is that, unlike a trail run, when the end is coming is unknown.

For me, life is a perpetual battle between safety and exploration, security and challenge, contraction and expansion. That’s where I am teetering. When one is looking over the edge into the unknown abyss, it is easy to retreat to the safe, known. I can understand why the servant who was given one talent would think the right play was to bury it safely so he wouldn’t lose it.

I pondered how my life would change if I treated the first rock in my hand just like it was one of the last couple of rocks?

Denial is not a River

In the West, we kid ourselves that life is a straight line when evidence all around points toward it being a circle. How can one look around and notice that virtually everything is a cycle and yet conclude that one’s life is the one thing that goes in one level direction from start to finish? Yet we run from any discussion of death and live in denial of aging. In my profession of cosmetic eyelid surgery, I have a front row seat to this denial. I have always marveled at how eager my patients of all ages are to stamp out any sign of getting older. Now that I myself am in my 6th decade of life, I am beginning to understand. Signs of change are all around. Just like the Earth went from flat to round with our expanding perspective, the clock is bending my life-line into a circle, slowly and surely.

The Enso circle (also called the Buddhist circle, the infinity circle) represents the completeness of the cycle of life. It is traditionally created with a single, smooth, perfect brushstroke. Everything is contained within the circle, but it is at the same time completely empty. To me, the inherent beauty and simplicity of this symbol says it all. I am not a Buddhist scholar, but the circle above speaks to me on a deep level. I hear it telling me that my fear is unnecessary, that everything is as it should be, that the cycle will complete with or without my effort. I often meditate on the meaning of the Enso circle. It simultaneously signifies blissful, purposeful completion, and release from the enslavement of our thoughts and worries. Life can be an eternal struggle, like Sisyphus pushing a rock up a hill, or it can be as effortless as the single stroke of a Buddhist master’s brush as it flows through the motion of an Enso circle. Your choice.