I went on a trip last weekend. It was a trip to Manhattan to drop my daughter off at a summer program at Columbia University, and then I was going to take the train north to visit some friends for a couple of days.
Travelling for me is always a mixed bag of emotions. I enjoy being in different places, but the actual experience of going places causes me a lot of anxiety.
So I did what I normally do which is pack carefully and try to anticipate the unexpected and try not to think about the trip very much. If I just "do" instead of "think" then things tend to go more smoothly.
The first 20 hours of the trip went smoothly. We got into Manhattan, got to our hotel, woke up the next morning and got Malia checked into her program. Then I met a friend for a drink before getting on the train.
Easy peasy.
Fast forward to 24 hours later. I am lost in a field, my face is covered in hives, and my daughter is on a train to meet me because she's decided not to do the program at Columbia and is coming home with me.
Whaaaaat?
My friend and I had gone on a hike the morning after I arrived at their house and we somehow took a wrong turn and ended up in a field. This might have been because at the time my daughter was frantically texting me about how she didn't want to stay for the program at Columbia. She was going to withdraw which meant she needed me to either come meet her back in Manhattan or she would come to me. We decided that she should get on the train and meet me at our friend's house, but trying to explain to a teenager how to navigate Grand Central Station when she's never been there before isn't easy. So perhaps I wasn't completely paying attention to where I was going.
The hives had started earlier that morning. But as the day went on, my face got more and more bumpy and itchy. I was slathering on Cortisone cream and taking Benadryl, but new patches of rough bumps were popping up by the minute.
Fast forward another 24 hours and my daughter is home in Los Angeles and my husband is driving me to Urgent Care because, when I got off the plane at LAX he took one look at my patchy red face and said, "Oh honey, I think you need to go to the doctor."
Ughhhhhhh! I had spent the entire trip telling myself that the hives weren't very bad. I was hoping I would land at home and they would miraculously just be better. But apparently not.
I can't fault him for his concern. This isn't the first time that I have been struck with medical problems on a trip. During a trip to Reno, I got a UTI which required an immediate trip to Urgent Care when we got home. On a trip to New York City, I had a tooth abscess which required an immediate trip to the dentist upon our return. And worst of all, on a visit to my parents' house, I broke out in a massive case of hives all over my body, in which I was actually going to into anaphylactic shock and required an immediate trip to the emergency room because my tongue and throat were swelling.
Back to this week. As I was sitting in Urgent Care waiting to be seen by a doctor, I thought about the past 72 hours wondering what had happened. And really, my only conclusion was life happened.
Almost nothing about the weekend had gone the way I'd planned it. And the end result was not a scenario that had ever even entered my thoughts. I had thought about delayed flights, getting lost, forgetting to pack things, and bad weather. But I had not thought about ending up flying back home with my daughter (who was supposed to be staying in New York for three weeks) and a bad case of hives.
There was a large part of me that wanted to be mad. My inner toddler wanted to throw a tantrum because things just weren't supposed to end this way. But I'm not a toddler anymore, and I was too tired to be anything but happy I was home.
And I realized that regardless of what had happened, everything was fine. I was going to get better (thank you wizards of science and medicine) and my daughter was home and safe. All the other stuff was not that important.
It was another great reminder from the universe that you can plan all you want but, in the end, you can't control what happens. Because usually when you start to think that you know exactly how things are going to happen...life happens. And life is unpredictable. Life is messy. Life is frustrating.
Life is also beautiful and exciting and wonderful.
And life reminded me of all that this past weekend.
As John Lennon said, "Life is what happens while you're busy making other plans."
Here are two questions I asked my Mom on this subject:
On your trip to Paris in 2001, when you initially got sick, how did you handle the disappointment of the trip not going the way you'd planned?
That's an interesting question because, of course, I had no idea at the time that I wouldn't recover. And so, I've never really thought about how I handled the disappointment of getting what I thought was just an acute illness.
I was mostly disappointed that I couldn't keep your Dad company in Paris. He'd get up in the morning, go out somewhere, come back at noon to see if I was any better, and then go out again. For some people, this would be okay, but he doesn't really like seeing things by himself. Yes, he went to the Louvre, but he didn't really enjoy it.
On the whole, I was able to handle the disappointment of missing what I'd so carefully planned for. I loved to look at guide books and pick interesting places to see. I even had us going to the famous cemetery where famous authors and musicians like Jim Morrison are buried (his tomb having been made into some kind of shrine by fans). So I had a list of 20 or so places to go and things to do. People who've read How to Be Sick know that I did two things: went to the British Hospital to see a doctor and tried going to the Musee D'Orsay, which was a bit of a disaster.
But I was able to put it in perspective as you've been able to do with your trip to New York. I knew I'd come home to a house I love and to a job I love (the latter turning out to be short-lived due to the illness). My two children were happily married. All in all, life was good and so I could accept those "lost" three weeks. Little did I know they'd extent until now, over 17 years later.
What is the Buddhist teaching for accepting that things are not always going to go the way we hope and plan for?
Mara, that IS the Buddha's teaching—accepting that things are not always going to go the way we hope and plan for. You illustrated so well how you pulled that off as you were describing how you dealt with the craziness and stress of last week which, as you point out, can happen because of the utter unpredictability of our lives.
I've been re-reading one of the first Buddhist books I owned. It's by Charlotte Joko Beck and this quotation struck me: "The only thing you can rely on is life being as it is."
She emphasized "only thing" several times. If I could accept this—that is, "live it" 24/7—my life would be much easier—more calm, less complaining, more gentle. I've found that being mindful (that is: paying attention) of what I'm thinking helps me get to acceptance because it's only when I see all the ways in which I'm not accepting life being as it is that I can see the mental suffering and misery that goes along with that. That's my incentive to move toward acceptance.
Mara, from your piece, I see that you've experienced the peace (even if it's just muscles relaxing) that comes with acceptance—true acceptance, not a cynical whatever—even when it can be a bumpy ride to get there. I'm so grateful that you can get there. It's a gift.
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