"Help Me Up!"

One day Chao-chou fell down in the snow, and called out, "Help me up!  Help me up!"  A monk came and lay down beside him.  Chao-chou got up and went away. - Zen Koan in the Zen Calendar (February 11, 2009).

Day 348. We took our first tandem ride of the year this afternoon (details to follow).  As we headed out on our usual route when leaving from the country house, I was struck by the remaining devastation from the May tornadoes that missed our home by a half mile.  Unfortunately, there were numerous homes that were not missed.  That night several twisters touched down within a five-mile radius in the area north and east of Lake Draper.  As we rode south on Westminster, my heart sank as I observed the desecrated acres of trees on both sides of the road.  The stark silhouettes of several regal old survivors loomed above us, maimed and mutilated remnants of huge branches severed near the trunk like wretched amputations.  Several blocks of desolation followed when we turned east on S.E. 89th Street.  More stripped trees, barren of the branches that had been slashed and peeled away by whirling winds, stood like lonely sentinels in fields littered with debris.

I thought about how easily carnage can be forgotten when it is out of sight.  Focused my attention on survivors of Katrina, the Haiti earthquake, the Indonesia tsunami, the earthquake and tsunami in Chile, innumerable tornadoes throughout the world, the current floods in Brazil and Australia, and other disasters across the globe.  Sent white light to all sentient beings impacted by carnage.  Reminded myself that people continue to suffer even when we cease to see the visual reminders.

I suffered during today's ride.  Less than five miles into our route, I began having flashbacks to post- heatstroke attempts to cycle.  It was confusing and terrifying.  When I first had problems, I hadn't yet learned about the signs of adrenal disregulation, and arrived at the only obvious diagnosis I could glean from my symptoms:  I was crazy.  Or a wimp.  Probably a crazy wimp.   My head hurt, dizziness made the world spin crazily, nausea washed through me, my entire body was overcome with fatigue and aches characteristic of the flu, a bizarre and compelling insistence to pull over and lay down enveloped me, and - worst of all - an excruciating, unfounded sense of panic and doom consumed me with humming urgency.  It sucked.  Imagine my dismay when the symptoms arrived with a vengeance today.

In a calm and detached voice, I expressed some concern about my performance to my captain.  He throttled back, and I managed to keep pedaling as I wrestled with the panic demons running sprints through my neural pathways.  Around mile 12, I asked to pull over.  It had dawned on me that I missed one of my medications for the past two days.  Hmmm.  Apparently, that particular medicine has an impact on the status of my health.  Good to know.  Twelve miles from home on a chilly tandem ride may not have been the best way to test its efficacy, but at least we weren't with a large group of impressive racers in the isolated hill country of Texas.  I informed my captain about the suspected cause of my bonking.  He backed my hypothesis (an educated wager from the man that dragged my pathetic Stoker self around for several months until I agreed to go a doctor) and talked the demons down a couple of notches.  Slowly, steadily, we made for home.

When we rode up the driveway, I wanted to kiss the pavement.  Dizzy and weak, I dismounted the bike, walked into the house, burst into tears.  With acute awareness of my recent reference to Dorothy and Oz, I must indulge another one:  all I wanted to utter was, "There's no place like home."  I was a pile of emotional jello:  overwhelmed, relieved, mortified at my regression.  I rarely cry.

My partner bent down, loosened the clamps on my cycling shoes and eased them off my trembling feet.  Set me down at the foot of the bed, stroked my back.  Ruby anxiously discharged her best therapy dog skills, reassuringly attaching her solid presence to my leg.  I quit crying, and began to make apologetic noises to my captain.  He hushed me.  Spoke a relaxed stream of calm words, reminding me that I had once been very sick, that we now knew how to keep that from happening again, and - with a grin in his voice - that we had still averaged over 17 mph.  I grinned, too, noting that my legs could apparently pedal quite strongly even in the midst of massive mutiny on the part of every other bodily system.  Then my captain - wise, patient, loving Bodhisattva that he is - just stayed beside me for a while.  Soon I got up and went away.  At least as far as the shower.

Tonight's quote has been in the "favorites" pile for the entire year.  I open my conference presentation on therapy for self-harming clients with it.  The quote captures an action that is far more healing than any formal therapy technique - that of simply lending a person in need your Being.  Your presence.  Your accompaniment.  I always thought I would use it in a blog about being a therapist.  In a typical Zen twist, the message found its way into a blog where I was the one who fell down, rather than the one who came to lay down beside.  The lesson remains the same.  "Help" comes in many forms.  Including that most powerful one in which a person just lays down beside us.  And waits.  Until we can get up again.

Gassho,
CycleBuddhaDoc