+7 Months (Believe It!)
Finally, mom gets me a hotel in Vancouver before my final flight. The face in the bathroom mirror says it all.
There is a part of me that craves oblivion.
It is all so much. Sometimes.
What occurred last Sunday, which I will unravel below, is an example, but listen: I have indeed detected a tangible and profound road weariness, one born of over six solid years of navigating . . .the C thang.
I met with a doctor today, and to prep some questions, I put a summary of my medical history since 2020 into Gemini AI, and reading it I was struck by just how MUCH. How MUCH I have been through with so MUCH treatment. A bit of awe at my staying power, fortitude and resilience.
Which is why I was so thrown my what happened last Sunday.
I had just spent 2 separate two week periods getting naturopathic, holistic and integrative healings at The Healing Oasis in Canada. I provide workshops and coaching and all sorts of odd jobs there as a volunteer, while receiving their superb treatments.
But British Columbia fires were recently making it increasingly smoky there, and as I approached the week I was to fly back to LA (before going back for 6 weeks straight), I knew I needed to be away, away from cancer cancer cancer, from showing up daily in “professional self” mode, from a busy schedule of treatments and volunteerism. I needed my little family, and to live my own life for a week, a small but precious drop of sweet, sweet liberty.
The attachment to this perceived oasis of freedom proved to be far more powerful than I realized. When four flights were cancelled, putting me in a hostel (four to a room, only affordable lodging available), I tried to get out of the city. I begged and cajoled to rent a car, to find a ride share, or to be sold a bus ticket to Vancouver and away from the thickening smoke that closed down the airport in Kelowna.
Everything was sold out, and every traveler was trying to get out of town. And, nothing was going my way. Hours on the phone with the airlines. Hours waiting for a bus cancellation. Rootless refugee, smoke everywhere, and my little window of freedom back home closing up on me.
And so, I lost it.
It was at the car rental place when it happened, breaking down (in tears, no less!). By then I was playing my cancer card for all it was worth, and was even beginning to believe myself that my survival was based on my escape from this noxious city. Truly out of integrity with the values I always believed I held, ideals of walking God’s path with poise and fortitude, serving and surrendering.
I came right up against my limits, which were appearing to me as quite meager.
Never mind that locals were homeless by the hundreds as fire consumed their world. I had become absorbed in my own duplicitous thoughts. I needed my family, I needed home for a bit.
Maybe I’m a bit hard on myself. This was cumulative, and craving all of this was very very human. But this also pointed to a lack of generated resources on my part, the reserves of peace and equanimity ordinarily cultivated by deep meditation and devotion.
See, you have to fill up your tank to prepare for things like this.
The “oasis” I sought was and always will be available within.
So, it took a long time to recover from this largely self-imposed experience of toxic “loop” thinking, and I felt deeply humbled. I took time to really study what I should have done, and what I MUST do in the future, as even more challenging events unfold for me and many others.
I have to be that guy. And I wasn’t that guy . . . not then.
I finally returned home for a few days, arriving via Vancouver (I barely made it on to a bus, driving through thick smoke near Merritt, watching new fires bloom in the mountains above), then Edmonton, finally LA.
We are now driving to the desert to watch the meteor shower, a car of friends, my folks. Then back to Canada in a few days, to serve and to heal. And to celebrate . . .+7 Months!
And meditate. And pray. The good, right kind of oblivion that we all need.