Life Worth Living

Progressive Muscle Atrophy is what they say I have, a variant of ALS with a less predictable course, and what I feel is that it takes huge effort to breathe and cope with the pull of gravity. My spine wants to collapse, curve, curl up and rest. And yet I notice that when I activate my muscles gently, with full attention and entire ease, they respond a little. They do hear me. 

It's such hard work. So I ask myself, why do it? What makes this particular life worth living? I am not particularly struggling with the popular question of what good am I. It's true that I don't seem to be of much use. This week I finally told all my clients/patients that I won't be back to work, and that hurt. But even when I was working as a psychologist, I didn't know what good would come until the moment it did. And in moments of flow, there was no question of evaluation, just a mutual process of unfolding and shaping and gliding. 

Where is my flow now? I move organically and sometimes impulsively from writing to sipping to breathing to listening to ...

The groceries arrived, fresh flowers this time; I cut and arranged, made a mess in the kitchen but now my eye is drawn to their life in my life. My fingers smell of the eucalyptus and as I bring my hand closer I breathe the fading sandalwood I applied earlier. My daughter is coming later with her girlfriend and I hope she likes the hat I crocheted, the card I watercolored. 

Soon I'll go outside into the lately rare blue atmosphere and drift along, lifting my mask when I can. There is pleasure here. 

The next day my reverie is punctuated by the news of the explosive rage at the Capital of our country. Then there is conversation--what we feel and what to do what to do what to do? Distinctions seem necessary. Some call for understanding, and while that is always helpful to reach for it is not the immediate action required now. Rage requires limits. As I've said, Trump is like a toddler who was never told "No." He and his deluded troops must be stopped. Here's a helpful chart from SURJ (Showing Up for Racial Justice).

It reminds me of a behaviorial model of change--you can't get someone to stop smoking etc. until there is a certain readiness. A hostile opponent must be called out, not in, and disarmed immediately. 

Ah well, opinions are part of the mix of life. I may be dying but it all still matters to me. Maybe because of the pandemic the wider world feels even closer. 

I've given myself permission to ramble, to write every Friday without presenting neat packages, more like a journal of loving life as it is while death whispers you too you too you too. 

January 2021