Being Seen and Being Ready for A Revelation: Healthcare USA, 2026

It took 16 months before I could get an appointment with a specialist that I needed for a complex and unusual medical condition. 16 months of increasing symptoms and of not-knowing– or of knowing there’s something living inside me whose face I could not see. 8 months to get the test I needed. Then 8 more months before I could see the doctor to explain the results and formulate treatment plans. Is this an example of a humane and well-functioning health care system in the supposedly richest nation in the world?

 

And there are so many inequities. I have good insurance. I am white and middle class. What might others who are not so privileged face? And so much paperwork, steps to slough through, high insurance payments.

 

The clinic I went to, the Cleveland Clinic, was wonderful. Like the care people report at the Mayo Clinic, the Langone Center at New York University, UCLA Medical Center, or Massachusetts General Hospital, these places are associated with teaching institutions; the doctors see a wide variety of patients and get to learn from a wide variety of fellow practitioners. Each doctor I saw showed not only care but competence. They were also wonderful human beings. Many local doctors are also tremendously compassionate, but they didn’t know what to do with me. As some said, I was a mystery. I did not fit in any of the usual categories. It’s good to stand out, they said, but not this way.

 

And what we can’t understand, we often reject or hide from. When I never got better from any treatments the local doctors offered; and after test after test revealed only peripheral problems, but never the core, some acted as if I, my personality maybe, was the problem. These doctors could think, and think well, but they were limited by their training and experience to only a narrow area of concern. Instead of doing everything they could to truly explore the symptoms wherever they led, many focused on simply checking off a checklist. And they often recognized this. They asked that when I did get a diagnosis, I should share it with them.

 

I know many people complain about doctors and dread going to see them, which I deeply understand. They feel vulnerable, in pain, and don’t like it. But for me, even after all the disappointments, I was still ready for a revelation. Going to the doctor meant there was a possibility of insight and a reduction of pain. So, for each appointment, I was excited. I prepared; I tried to make the visit count. I researched symptoms and possible treatments, wrote out questions and a list of medications. Before entering the office, I focused on my breath, the feel of my feet on the ground, or on the quality of my awareness right then. And finally, at the Clinic, one doctor said he had seen other people with what I had. I had a diagnosis. I felt redeemed.

 

Yet even at the Cleveland and the other Clinics, problems are increasing. They used to employ a multidisciplinary team approach to treating complex illnesses. No longer; they just don’t have the staff. And here, after being hospitalized last year, a local doctor promised they’d form a team to work to diagnose and treat my condition. Never happened.

 

What we in the U. S. are now facing under DT is the seemingly intentional undermining of healthcare. This administration is not only attacking MEDICAID and the Affordable Care Act or any federal health insurance assistance. They’re also attacking our healthcare from multiple directions. For example, there just aren’t enough doctors. This shortage has been getting worse for years, with the pandemic accentuating the problem. Yet DT has cut funding for universities, including medical training. Over a quarter of our doctors are now from other countries, many “third world” countries. Two of the five doctors I saw at the clinic were not born in the U. S.

 

Much of our health care, not only doctors but nurses, technicians, etc. is by immigrants….

 

*To read the whole post, please go to The Good Men Project.

Reflections on The Drive to Know: Reality is More than Words and People are Not Just Concepts

The urge to know, to have an answer, to understand, to explain— this is such a powerful drive in our lives. So many writers, philosophers, fellow human beings have thought and written about this. And we feel it all the time. We don’t hear from a friend or loved one and we send a text, and worry-wait for a reply. We get in the car in a snowstorm yet want to know if we’re being stupid driving anywhere. And when we listen to the news lately, we might wonder what will succeed in making things better? What else might be taken from us, or what will be revealed that will assure democracy and our humanity will prevail over autocracy and cruelty? There can be such pain and discomfort in not-knowing.

 

Many of us can recall a time we felt some new pain and wondered what the cause was. A pain without an explanation is a pain doubled. Sometimes, not-knowing can be fun and add openness, excitement, and anticipation to our lives. But often, it’s just another source of worry.

 

We have this sense of ourselves, of what it’s like to reflect on our feelings or experiences. I think I know what it feels like to be me.

 

But there are times that I’m not so sure. For example, when I realize my attitude, energy level, or what I enjoy doing has changed. Or when so much is going on inside my mind it seems like foreign territory, and I have no idea where it all came from or where it’s leading me. Our inner world can feel so vast and elusive. Or sometimes someone says something about me that shocks me. And as I get older, this rate of change intensifies. I never know from day to day how I’ll be or, of course, what will happen. This is another dimension of not-knowing. We might feel we don’t even know ourselves. How can we control what we don’t know?

 

And then there’s the negativity bias, where we imagine the worst so we’re ready to take action to prevent it. And we develop a theory about ourselves that’s just too awful to face and we cease to care about the reality; we catastrophise and paralyze ourselves. In this case, friends can help us perceive and face what we need to face but haven’t.

 

The same is true if a neighbor, friend, or loved one is in pain. If we don’t know the cause, we worry twice as much about them. We want to help. This is part of our natural compassion. If we have an explanation, a reason, even a mere theory of a cause, we worry less. We have a way to help. Even if the reality is bad, there’s often a sense of comfort in knowing.

 

But sometimes the suggestions we offer others can be hurtful. We can unknowingly imply we’re superior in some way, or that the person is ignorant, or doesn’t know what we think they should know. We can’t totally get into their mind with ours and maybe we don’t want to use our empathy and imagination to even try do so.

 

One issue here is feeling hurt and helpless in the face of another’s pain. We can feel a loss of control in being powerless to help. So, we reach for something to give us that control. But I wonder about control. What does it really mean?

 

We might also expect there to be reasons for things. Not just causes, but something like God delivering prizes and penalties. When something awful happens to a good person, and to ourselves, we might try to figure out “what did we do to deserve this?” But I think God is too big or the intelligence of the universe too inclusive to think in terms prizes and penalties. Maybe, the teaching about Karma is correct, and one thing, one action, one intention simply sets up the conditions for other actions and intentions.

 

And when I try so hard to find an explanation, I could simply be enjoying expanding my knowledge. I love reading and learning. But it can also be an attempt to turn reality into words and people into concepts. A word is so much smaller than the reality it purports to explain. And a concept of a person can describe at most a tiny particle of them. A little bit of humility about what we think we know can go a long way….

 

*To read the whole article, please go to The Good Men Project.

The Example of Minneapolis; Our Needs are Only One Line in a Song of Everyone’s Needs

The world, and not just the human world, looks so threatened right now. One thing that gives me hope when hope seems impossible or seems like more of a blindfold than a clear viewing, is the response of the people of Minneapolis to the violent attack on them by our own federal government.

 

Every day in this country, we experience the supposed leader of the “free world” causing new threats, new horrors and shocks. So many lives are being upended and destroyed. This is what DT brings to us. Yet, to change this and survive the assault, I think we must look to what’s happening in Minneapolis. There, in eye-scorching detail, is the affliction– and the cure.

 

The affliction: we see it daily. So many injured and arrested. Two innocent, caring people dead. The US government invading an American city, attacking its own citizens, and lying about what they’re doing and why. 3000 members of DT’s personal army roaming the city streets, obstructing the lives of people, not arresting supposed criminals but anyone brown, black, or anyone who gets in their way. Immigrants are less likely to commit crimes than people born in the US. ICE is ripping people from cars, schools, hospitals, places of work and worship. Acting as if the rule of law never existed or didn’t apply to them. These actions cannot be forgotten or excused just because the DT administration has finally announced they will soon end the ICE invasion in Minnesota.

 

The murders of ICU nurse for the US Department of Veterans Affairs, Alex Pretti, and poet and loving mother of 3, Renee Nicole Good, wake us up to the danger every one of us now faces. Every one of us. But reading about the response by the people of Minneapolis to such violence gives me hope and direction; it rescues me and could possibly rescue all of us from the fear and depression DT seems to purposefully instigate. This is the cure. The people of Minnesota are our neighbors. By nonviolently standing up, in a disciplined and caring manner, to oppose this government ordered violence and destruction, they are standing with all of us. But they aren’t just protesting in the streets.

 

A mother of a newborn baby and a 16 year old girl was picked up by ICE on her way to work, leaving 2 children at home, uncared for by any government agency. The 16 year old did her best, but her sibling was used to being breast fed. She called a neighbor, who was breast-feeding her own child, for assistance. The neighbor stepped in, helping the children with food and sharing her own breast milk with the baby.

 

Despite the raids by ICE interfering with business, ripping shop owners and workers from their stores and homes, several individuals and businesses have been doing what they can to help their neighbors. A family was seized by ICE and held in a facility in Texas. Upon their release, a Minnesota bookstore raised $6,000 to help the family return to their lives. A café in Minneapolis has been offering their neighbors free food until ICE is gone from the state. Doctors are making home visits to those needing medical assistance and who fear exposing themselves to ICE on the streets.

 

As the BBC points out, “Operation Metro Surge,” DT’s invasion of Minnesota began after his racist rant against Somali immigrants. He called them “garbage,” said their country is “no good for a reason.”  The political purpose of his comments and the invasion that followed are revealed by his vicious attacks on Somali Democrat and Congresswoman Ilhan Omar, an outspoken critic of DT. DT divides and divides, setting one against another. No community can exist peacefully inside a wall of hate….

 

*To read the whole post, please go to The Good Men Project.

A Time to Remember That What We Need Can and Must Be Fought for and Won: When Our Breath and Heart Find Each Other

The winter holidays⎼ they bring up so much for so many of us. As with many others, I have almost always looked forward to the holidays. When I was a child, I looked forward to gifts and family celebrations. As a student and teacher, I looked forward to a vacation from work. Now that I’m retired, my focus is on getting together with family and friends. However, there were years in college that I dreaded the holidays, especially the New Year. If I didn’t have a family gathering, a party to go to, friends to be with, a date, the holidays could be lonely and alienating.

And this year especially, so hurtful. The cost of toys, presents, for example, are just too expensive. The cost of simple living is too expensive. My wife and I ignore gift-giving for ourselves. The only gift we give each other is our presence. Yet, for the children we know and charities⎼ it’s a different story. And the commercialization obscures if not undermines the deeper meaning of such moments in time.

The holidays could be so rich. Hanukah is a festival of light and freedom. Kwanzaa of family, community, and culture. Christmas of joy in the birth of Jesus. So much meaning in the depths of the holidays.

The solstice was just last week. Humans have, possibly forever, celebrated solstice, the longest reign of night, and the beginning of the cold, at least in the Northern hemisphere where I live. It’s traditionally a time to engage in rituals to assure that the sun will come again, that spring will follow winter, warmth follow cold, renewal follow hibernation.

The holidays thus have a sacred dimension, a connection to a depth of life and history. Maybe every moment does, too. Their significance is not just religious. The holidays celebrate workers getting a break from intense labor. They signify a recognition of shared humanity, however dim that recognition often was in the past and might be so today.

Every one of us needs time to rest, even for those who get no time off for the holidays. The fact that we have days of rest is beyond a right; it’s a sacred necessity.

Every one of us needs time to step back and contemplate why we’re here on this earth. We need to renew ourselves and our relationships with what surrounds us⎼ to stop, maybe close our eyes and allow ourselves to feel our feet on the ground. To feel right now, there’s no separation⎼ we can never step off the earth or out of the universe that sustains us. Realizing this is a sacred awakening.

We might also feel isolated from others. But we carry other people with us always, in our memories, in our language, in our genes, in our hopes and dreams. Feeling this is a sacred remembrance. When we feel isolated, we’re afraid. When we feel present, fear is diminished.

And there have been moments lately when I just start crying internally. I almost never let it out. Who knows what will emerge. Maybe holidays are here so when no one⎼ or just one dear someone⎼ is around, our breath and our heart can find each other.

In the past, people from many nations fought for a five-day workweek, fighting against those who oppressed them⎼ and they were successful. But today, many are forced to work more than one job just to meet basic economic needs, while the DT regime cuts programs like SNAP, MEDICAID, Headstart, school lunch programs that once helped make life possible for many. He’s working to undermine the power of the people, and is giving to the rich whatever they can steal from the rest of us.

 

*This is a rewrite of an older blog.

**To read the whole post, please go to The Good Men Project.

Our Families Are a Door to Infinity: Asking Questions Before It’s Too Late

When I was growing up, I just didn’t think to ask my parents or my grandparents about “the old country” or their own childhoods. When my father was in his nineties and my mother had already passed away, I realized the time I had with him was coming to an end. He had in his memory a whole history of our family and of this country, that I knew little about. I didn’t want to lose all those connections. So, during the last year or two of his life, whenever possible, we looked through old photo albums and I asked him about his childhood and parents, but even he knew or said little of his family’s background in Europe.

 

My grandparents all came from eastern Europe, Russia, Poland, and Ukraine. Did I hear so little about their lives before coming to the US not only because I seldom asked but because the memories were so intertwined with trauma? Had they felt deprived of their voices?

 

In  the novel Wandering Stars, by the mid 19th and early 20th century novelist and playwright Sholem Aleichem, one of the main characters sings a prayer in a “plaintive, authentic Yiddish melody.” It captures well one aspect of the lives of the characters in the novel, which takes place in a small Russian shtetl or predominantly Jewish market town at the end of the nineteenth century.

 

“…Dear God, the truth of exile

Is told in tears.

How long, how long, dear God, The awful fears

Of being beaten, driven

And no one cares.

When, oh when, dear God, wilt thou

Be who hears…”

 

Life wasn’t all pogroms and terror. There was love, family, and friendship. There was the Yiddish Theatre, religion, art and creativity. The singer was herself a possible future recruit for the theater. The culture and time described in the novel was also the culture and time into which my grandparents were born. Had they, like the fictional characters, lived in Europe as exiles from a “promised land,” or promise of home?

 

When I was young, my family lived in a ranch style house in a suburb of New York City. My grandmother on my mother’s side lived with us, with me, my parents, and brother, for half of the year. The other half, she lived with my aunt. Grandma was a short woman, in her sixties or seventies. She spoke little yet tried to live in accord with her memory of traditional ways of living and believing. When she was with us, for example, we ate Kosher meals so she would feel comfortable. But when she was gone from our house, she didn’t try to tell us how to live. And she provided a link to a reality, a history beyond what we knew in the U. S.

 

Despite her age, she could be fiery and passionate. She hated violence, for example. Maybe she’d seen too much growing up. One time, 2 older boys started a fight with me right in front of our house. I was actually holding my own against the two when grandma came rushing from the house with an umbrella in her hand. She started beating on the two attackers until they ran away. Then she started beating on me, while yelling “never get in fights. Never. Never.”

 

One evening, when I was six or seven, she and I were home alone…

 

*To read the whole piece, please go to The Good Men Project.

Caring for the One and Only World We Inhabit: A Community of Hope and Action

When we’re attacked, or the material supports of our lives are threatened, we might turn inward. We might do this not to bring light to our inner life but to shield our whole being. To hide from the attacker. To distance us from fear and pain.

 

We all need to turn inward sometimes for this, for self-reflection, to be present, to find peace. And to put aside memories, hurts, and traumas. But a fear and threat festers when left for too long inside us. When the time is right, taking action to break that impulse to hide, and instead to reach out to others, to learn more and fight back feels vivifying. It enriches. It might also save our lives. When we act to right a wrong, act to diminish pain and suffering, this can strengthen us, change us.

 

Saturday, 10/18/25, was such an action. The NO KINGS RALLY was a day to remember. One of the largest single days of protest in American history. Not just because almost 7 million of us in 2,600 locations, cities, towns spoke out against this administration’s outright corruption, suppression of the law, brazen infliction of cruelty and inhumanity. But because we the people acted on this day in a manner in stark contrast to DT and his Congressional sycophants. We acted peacefully. We acted lawfully. We acted joyfully. We acted patriotically, to protect the nation from a would-be King, Dictator. We spoke the truth.

 

They lied and said we hated America. But the rally showed something very different: exorbitant love. For the constitution. For the laws that DT blatantly ignores and undermines. For many brown and black Americans and so many others that DT and his ICE agents are abusing, detaining, jailing, deporting. For this earth that makes our life possible. For each other. As reported, with a bit of irony, in the internet news source The Feed, nothing says we hate America more than defending the constitution and exercising first Amendment rights. “No Kings” is literally the founding principle of this nation.

 

My wife and I were a few minutes late. As we walked to the rally site there were so many people on the sidewalk with us, with signs, and going in the same direction as we were. A few were turning toward a main road to share their signs with motorists. When we arrived, we listened to speakers talk about abuses of power, military and para-military agents turned against their own fellow citizens⎼ acts many in the military say they did not sign up for and deplore.  We heard talks about the impacts of firing of thousands of government workers. Heard the facts about how DT’s tariffs, and destroying the lives of working immigrants are raising the costs of living for all of us.  Heard how his super awful legislation is undermining our health. Heard how money approved by Congress for MEDICAID, for medical and scientific research is now going to the super-rich.

 

The people around us were neighbors and friends. Coworkers. Former students. Shopkeepers. A carpenter who worked on our house. A doctor who treated us. People smiled at us. We enjoyed the clever creativity of the signs people held. We felt empathy for the hurt that so many here and elsewhere have experienced at the hands of DT’s administration of cruelty. This is our home.

 

DT inflicts fear on the nation, hate and vengeance against anyone who speaks against him.  He attempts to make us feel isolated and powerless, that we have no future but the nightmare he’s creating….

 

*To read the whole article, please go to The Good Ken Project.

The Message of the Stag: If we Don’t Exercise it, We Lose It

I was 18. It was early spring, with just a little snow left on the ground. I was in a forest, taking a walk, while a deep fog was emerging from the ground itself, covering everything, turning the world gray, indistinct. Hazy. And suddenly, ten feet or so away, the head of a deer appeared before me as if it had been born from the fog itself; as if a brand-new dimension of the ordinary had shown itself. It was startling. Unexpected. It stared at me, and I stood there with it, rooted to the spot. Not one thought in my mind. The whole universe had become just us, just this.

 

And then it was gone. The deer was gone, but the beauty of the fog, of the moment remained.

 

Last fall, another encounter with a deer. I was once again on a walk, this time it was fall, in the late afternoon, on our rural road, and I saw a deer crossing about 300 feet ahead of me. I continued walking and when I got closer, I noticed it was a stag, with maybe a 2-year growth of horns. Instead of running off, like deer usually do, it stopped, turned, and walked at a strong pace toward me. I stopped. He stopped and looked right at me.

 

I wondered if he was confused and mistook me for another deer, or if he was sick. Was he preparing to approach further to see what I was, or to attack? I got my cellphone out and took a quick photo. Only then did he run off.

 

What was the message here, if anything?  How do I understand this? Surely, one way is to read about and carefully observe deer behavior and figure out why deer act as they do. But each deer, not that unlike each human, is similar to but different from any other. Unique.

 

After he ran off, I took a breath and took time to enjoy what had happened. A wild animal had studied me as I had studied it. It was a beautiful moment, a gift of nature.

 

How we understand an event or sensory signal is at least as important as the initial stimuli we’ve experienced. I’ve talked about this in blogs about dealing with pain. If we interpret chest pain as a heart attack, it becomes crazily more intense than if we interpret it as indigestion.

 

The principle is the same in relating with other people. How we respond to comments from a teacher or friend, an event in the news or a statement of a politician, can be more consequential in our lives than what was originally said or done. Despite all the ugliness and fear in our nation right now, we don’t want to become ugly and always afraid. Despite all those who aim to make us feel small, isolated, and powerless we want to look at life as broadly and honestly as possible. What we see is obviously influenced both by what we look at and the attitude, or mindset we bring to it.

 

And how we interpret an event can determine how much we inhabit that moment of our lives. We evaluate stimuli, occurrences in terms of approach-avoid. Helpful-harmful. Pleasurable-unpleasurable. Good-bad⎼ or neutral. This is built into us. And we can subject ourselves to this same propensity, of looking for threats, dangers, mistakes before we see anything else.

 

Psychologists and others say we humans have a “negativity bias.”…

 

**To read the whole post, please go to The Good Men Project.

How Accepting Aging Can Heal Loss and Pain; Finding Ourselves in the Sound of Rain

When my father was in his nineties, he said one of the worst things he was facing was the sense of being alone; that almost everyone his own age or older was gone. Sure, he was lucky to have lived so long and been mentally clear, able to remember all these people, able to manage his own life. Able to even do his own taxes. He was an accountant, so this was especially important to him. He was also lucky to have sons and other, although younger, friends and relatives. But the number of losses in his life, and the sense of emptiness was staggering.

 

He also thought about how his aging and dying would affect others. One morning he called my wife and me to tell us he was going to die that day. He wanted to say goodbye. I found out he also ordered presents for several people, baskets of fruit. But he did not die that day. The next day he did go into a rapid decline and died 2 weeks later.

 

He lived 8 hours away from us, so we immediately packed the car and drove to see him. I didn’t realize it then, but the act of thinking about and caring for others made his own passing, for the moment, less fearsome. Caring for others, compassion, love just has this benefit. It surely can hurt, and terribly. But that hurt, that grief, placing ourselves in another’s heart and mind, and valuing their life and perspective can help us value, understand, and expand our own perspective. By feeling some responsibility to others, feeling the need for kindness, compassion, we feel more able to be kind to ourselves.

 

I know that some of us think about others and their judgments of us, more than we recognize ourselves. We impose an image we think others hold of us on top of our sense of self, obliterating our sense of ourselves. This is different from what my dad talked about. He was actually giving up his self-concern, not replacing his own inner awareness with what he imagined others thought of him. Not replacing a living feeling of his own sense of inner reality with an abstract thought. And this allowed him to notice and be more.

 

I don’t want to romanticize this. My dad wasn’t entirely selfless, certainly not fearless. He greatly feared a painful death. The end was not easy. But for several days his concern for others helped him approach his own death with more grace and maybe less suffering.

 

And there’s great research on this, on the link between compassion for others and compassion for ourselves. By looking beyond ourselves to others, we think more clearly and better notice the larger context we’re part of. We feel ourselves right here, not in some time in the future or past, not as a thought or memory, but as right now.

 

We don’t put things off or separate our feelings and awareness from thoughts or with thoughts. We come alive in what gives us life, now.

 

I thought of this because I’m now having similar feelings as my dad did. As I lose more people I once knew, and so many of those around me have severe medical issues, I appreciate what he had told me more now than I did then. His experience then is educating mine now.

 

I wrote a short story years ago that was published by Sunlight Press and my website. It was about a walk I took with the headmaster of my school in 1969, when I served in the Peace Corps in Sierra Leone. We were debating whether political change was possible. He said no; I argued yes. It started raining. I opened my umbrella and said, “I just changed the situation. We’re no longer getting wet.” He replied, “No, you changed nothing. It’s still raining.”…

 

*To read the entire article, please click on this link to The Good Men Project.

When We Feel Each Word We Utter Holds Another Person in Its Hands: In Making Ourselves Real to Others, We Become More Real to Ourselves

We all know those moments when we so want to talk to a friend. It might be with one particular person; or it might be a cry to just talk with someone, anyone who cares or knows us, and who will listen. There are moments when we realize something we didn’t say, or regret saying. There are moments when something is just turning over and over inside us, shaking the nerve pathways. And we yearn to reach out. There are moments when we wonder, who is it I can talk to that will understand?

 

But I wonder⎼ this drive can be so compelling. What is it we think we gain from sharing? What do we feel will happen or change by the act of opening our mouths and speaking? I doubt it’s just a release of pent-up emotion that we crave. And it must be something more than simply sharing with someone important to us something that’s important.

 

I’ve had some medical issues lately. And part of me wants to keep it all to myself, so in my own eyes and the eyes of the world, I appear healthy. But the questions about how to understand my health abound. What does this pain mean? Is there a diagnosis? The not-knowing can be frightening. A definitive explanation or label, even a scary one, can provide such relief.

 

And this is so true for all that goes on inside of us. When we look inward, hear a thought, feel a sensation or feeling, how do we know with any surety what it means? It’s so difficult to make sense of all that goes on inside us. We can feel our heart beating slowly or quickly.  We can feel tension in our belly, a rawness in our gut, heat in my palm. But there are no bold printed signs on my inner roadways saying, “here I am” and “this is truth.” Our inner world is so vast and elusive⎼ and tricky. Anything we experience can be interpreted in so many ways.

 

And what about the strong impulse to share whatever news we have, about our health or any event in our lives? How much should we share? Our state of health is part of our identity. When we talk, we create a perspective on who we are. In a way, we try to shape reality itself. We select words, images, and create stories with ourselves as the main character. We become the hero or heroine of one version of our lives. This gives our struggles meaning and importance.

 

But to select, we limit and distort. We describe the indescribable; we create walls or boundaries around what is naturally boundaryless. And we think of these boundaries as points of distinction, or separation, even isolation. So, how do we speak so it serves us instead of isolates us?

 

By creating a story of a self, we create something another person can relate to. By selecting a feeling or experience to share, we give another person a chance to enter our experience, to climb inside with us. Boundaries also create points of contact. A hand not only touches but can be touched.

 

And as I said earlier, our inner lives can be so fuzzy and confusing, so vast and limitless. Saying something about ourselves to another person is in a way a personal experiment. How we interpret our inner signals and outer events is crucial. We try one story and see if it holds up and feels right. Not only in the eyes and mind of the other person, but how it feels in our own mouth. We use conversations with others to make the fuzzy clear and give reality to ourselves. In making ourselves real to others, we become more real to ourselves.

 

But we need to be careful here….

 

*To read the whole post, please go to The Good Men Project.

What Feeds The Waters of Heart: The Care We All Need

I woke up one recent Sunday morning with chest pain. As I got out of bed, the pain gradually grew until there was almost nothing else left in my mind and body but pain. Each breath was a question. Most of us know what’s it like when we have some physical ailment and don’t know the cause; and thus, we don’t know what to do about it. The not-knowing becomes an additional mountain of pain. We don’t know how serious our situation is. We don’t know if we should go to the ER. I would’ve called a doctor, but it was Sunday⎼ none were available. Was this IT? Was my life at stake? Could I die?

 

My wife and I were hesitant to go to the ER because we’d been there earlier in the week and had spent hours without getting any clear answers. But pain can overwhelm doubt and provide its own dictates. We went.

 

The drive was both horrible and hilarious. It was early in the morning. I wanted my wife to drive through stop signs and redlights. She wouldn’t. She said we’d get a ticket. I said if any cop stopped us, they’d escort us to the ER. I turned on the flashers. She turned them off. We laughed; we wanted to cry, or I did, but didn’t. It would hurt too much. I was never so glad to see the mechanical doors of the ER.

 

I had called the ER before leaving home, and maybe that helped get us in sooner. Still, it took hours before they could get a hint about what was going on with me and do anything at all to reduce the pain, let alone begin treatment. I wound up being admitted for 5 days. And this changed my whole perception of hospitals.

 

I’m lucky; I still have good health insurance from my former job. My room was on the fourth floor of a community hospital that overlooked a lake carved out of steep hills by ancient glaciers. At each different time of day, and differently each day, the quality of light changed. At 5:00 am, amidst the thrill of mutedly hearing through the thick walls so many birds greet the morning, the trees and hillsides appeared in the lake as cloudy representatives of themselves, vague mysterious hints of who they were. In the afternoon, maybe at 3:00 pm, the light was stark. The reflections, if there were any, were clear. They tricked my eyes; I could almost see the reflection as the reality.

 

Each day, I walked the halls as much as I could. And as I did so, I realized I was learning lessons I never anticipated. I was learning respect, for one thing. Not just an obvious respect, of not talking too loudly, not disturbing others at rest. But a respect for a shared humanity. This was a unique situation. All around me, the normally hidden was exposed. I heard people cry or shout out in pain. I heard buzzers ring for nurses. I heard a team of doctors explain to my roommate their diagnosis and need for possible life-saving surgery. Luckily, everything turned out fine. Pain and suffering were right there for all of us. Our mortality was right there. And it was accepted, let in, so it could be faced. So, it could be admitted.

 

And care, compassion. This, too, surrounded us. It was the core of the place, despite the profit motive, despite insurance company dictates, rigid procedures made to protect the hospital and caregivers at least as much as patients. Despite an often-formulaic education that made it difficult at times for doctors and nurses to see me, the individual human in the patient. Sometimes profession got in the way of avocation. But the compassion was there, with both doctors and nurses. Patients learn to care for others from the nurses, to care for each other. I had a roommate and after 2 days we were sharing phone numbers. When we care, our perception and thinking opens. We see more.

 

And I noticed something weird as I walked. My mind was in a way like the lake. Amidst all the pain, a pain that felt unendurable at times, there was this quiet base. Just as I could see the beauty of the lake even as I felt in myself confusion and fear, there was this base of sheer knowingness in everything perceived or thought. There was an awareness without pain. That felt as real, as immediate as life could get. That made everything possible, all of this, all of what was frightening, what was hopeful, and what was joyous.

 

And who knows how this happened, but in the morning of the second or third day at the hospital my wife was helping me wash and change clothes. I was trying to put on shorts, and for some reason I felt incredibly astonished that I had 2 legs. Can you believe it? I had 2 legs? And I started laughing. My wife thought I was going nuts and asked what was going on. I tried to explain about having two legs being so much fun. And that my shorts, too, had 2 openings for legs. A perfect fit. And this was the most amazing thing in the world. And then she, too started laughing, giggling crazily, which made it very difficult for me to get my shorts on. It was a breaking or waking point, maybe, for us in dealing with the whole situation.

 

And it wasn’t drugs laughing. Some might say I sounded like I was high on drugs. But for various reasons, I can’t take painkillers and don’t do recreational drugs. Maybe this was the high, the delight that naturally inhabits the waters of mind but which we don’t notice often enough. Maybe it was just being absurdly tired or feeling the absurdity of the situation. Maybe we both just needed a great laugh to relieve the great stress….

 

*To read the whole post, please go to The Good Men Project.