Title to be Determined

We are all serving a life sentence in the dungeon of the self. - Cyril Connolly in the Zen Calendar (September 9, 2009).

Day 117. The electricity is out in the house in Oklahoma City, so I just drove 25 miles to blog on Old Faithful, the fossil computer in Norman. I realize this was not a very "green" decision, but decided that keeping the momentum going in my commitment to blog daily trumped a brief increase in my carbon footprint. I will find a way to make it up. I walk to work most days, minimize showers, laundry, and other trivial acts of cleanliness, so perhaps I was running a deficit anyway.

While watching the sunset at the lake this evening with Katy and Ruby, I experienced a strange string of thoughts. In my imagination, a life spread before me that was comprised of eating, sleeping, riding my bike, working in the yard, taking my dogs to the lake, meditating, and writing. I chastised myself severely for such lowly aspirations, reminding myself of good old fashion Balance and the necessity of including work and responsibility with leisure. My spirit rebelled at this logic, steering me down an odd stream of consciousness I had never paddled before.

It occurred to me that I have been out of balance, erring on the Too Much Work side of the scale, since about the age of 15. I worked full time while I was in high school, and after that I rocketed through three college degrees like NASA's last mission. Parenthood came a year after that, and Single Parenthood another year later. Not the mom gets a breather every-other-weekend, six-weeks-in-summer kind of single parenting, either. The 24/7, 365 days a year kind. I didn't even get the take-him-to-the-grandparents'-house reprieve. One set of grandparents lived 2,300 miles away, and the other set . . . hmmm. Grandpa was a drunk, and Grandma was preoccupied with denying that he was a drunk. My energy was allocated across a few strict categories: parent, work, cultivate a private practice, manage the house, yard and car, try to make ends meet, worry, stress, fret, obsess, ruminate, stave off panic, and hang out in ICU waiting rooms way too frequently.

Described in those words, my life sounds like a real bummer. I'll admit that there were a couple of decades when depression moved in, unpacked a trunk, and threatened to become a permanent resident in my soul, but at the time I didn't know any other existence. I was too exhausted at the end of the day to have many feelings or opinions about it. In utter oblivion, I was practicing non-attachment. Deep within my psyche, in the vicinity of Self-Preservation and Survival, an instinctive defense mechanism protected me from feeling the depth of my despair. I just went from day to day, mostly trying to grapple with the thing closest to my nose. I put my son first; all other priorities arranged themselves around caring for him.

That paragraph sort of leaked out of my fingertips when I wasn't looking. But it got laid down in the white space, so I'm leaving it. The point upon beginning this blog was to formulate a rationale for what currently feels like a disproportionate craving for simplicity and irresponsibility. I want a respite from worry. If there is some Great Cosmic Formula for calculating equitable quantities of work and leisure in a person's life, I am certain that I expended my work share before the average age. I have always been somewhat precocious.

I fantasize about the life of a monk: chanting, sitting, washing cups, hearing dharma talks, reading koans and mondos, walking kinhin, yoga. Sounds like Nirvana, but I know better. I'm probably not cut out for the monastic life, though I am noticing that elements of it are increasingly finding their way into my existence, especially the Middle Path. As tempting as it sounds, I doubt I will abandon all responsibility to sit in my garden and watch my dogs wag their tails. In lieu of the last couple of decades, I have a lot of Balancing to make up for.

Gassho,
CycleBuddhaDoc