Take It Easy

I was a new college student, something I had never imagined I might be, and yet here I was walking across campus to join some new friends for lunch. I was almost drunk with excitement. 

I’d lived my life up to now thinking that I was defective somehow and that I’d never have the opportunities that seemed to come effortlessly to others. I was convinced that I simply didn’t deserve the good things in life. It was just the way things were. Nothing to be done about it.

And yet, in the last few weeks of high school, I was surprised to learn that some of the people I’d known for 12 years actually thought of me as a friend. I still remember the shock—a joyful shock to be sure—when one of them told me that a small group was driving up to state college over the weekend and suggested that I join them. 

I did. 

A few months later, I was enrolled in university and had a part-time job in the local hospital. On this particular beautiful morning, I was walking across the mall thinking about how my life had turned around. I had a bright future as a medical research assistant—my dream job—and I was going to meet my new-found friends in the student union where we would share the excitement of new lives that included a future that would be bright and blissful. How could it not be, right?

The mall was a beautiful park-like setting in the center of campus, with meandering walkways shaded by gigantic oak trees. Walking underneath the oaks, I could hear drops of rain from the recent shower, as they fell from one leaf to the next with a wet plop, plop, plop. 

There was another sound too, slightly different from the sound of splattering raindrops. This sound was not so much plop as plip and it was followed quickly by plip, plip. I recognized the sound as that of acorns falling through the leafy canopy. 

The oaks were full of squirrels gathering acorns and occasionally one of the nuts would fall. I refer to the acorns, not the squirrels. Most of the dropped nuts would hit a tree limb and be deflected through the branches but some of them fell directly to the ground, not striking tree limbs, and those would fall hard and fast, hitting the ground with a solid thump.

I paid little attention to the plops and plips because I was caught up in thoughts of the future—the immediate future in the campus cafe and the glorious future in research labs finding the cure for cancer and any other malady that happened to get in my way. 

Then suddenly, out of the blue--thwack! 

A few days before, in my physics class, we had discussed Noh's scale of hardness, the standard method for determining the hardness of one object relative to another. You may remember that diamond is the hardest natural substance and is rated 10. The softest is talc and it’s rated 1. Most of the hard things we encounter in the world are rated 7. 

I don't know for sure where the outer shell of an acorn would fall on the Noh's scale--I'd guess a 6 maybe. But I can tell you that when an acorn falls from lofty heights and hits you squarely on the topknot, you forget about the future and pay intense attention to the here and now. Thwack! It hurts! The eyes fill with tears.

Now, given how happy I was at the instant just before that acorn arrived—my mood must have registered a 10 surely--you might expect my mood to fall to level 7 or possibly even 6. But you would be wrong. 

Just like that acorn that fell without anything slowing it, my mood fell directly into the basement. In an instant, expectations for that bright future were replaced with storm clouds. I would never be happy--never!

I didn't join my friends in the cafe. I couldn't face them, loser that I felt I was. I went back to my dorm room, a little cell that looked out over a parking lot, and sat there on my bed thinking that I should drop out of school and then what? I didn't really know. None of the ideas that came to mind seemed feasible. I wanted to disappear, to cease to exist.

If you can identify with that kind of drastic mood swing, then you probably already know something about the effects of run-away emotions. You've probably experienced times when your emotions got in the way of your intentions. Like the cat in the adage, letting I dare not wait upon I would.

It's not easy overcoming feelings like those described above but it can be done. There are no secrets and no "hacks." 

Fundamentally, it's all about paying attention to the feelings in my body and then persistently, even fiercely, practicing the principles that work to make us feel better, even when we don't "feel" like working them.

I refer to this persistent, stubborn commitment to my emotional recovery as Fierce Qigong. Overcoming emotional roadblocks requires fierceness because, just like that acorn, life comes hard and fast.

Join me, please. No matter whether you need some help coping with everyday life, or you simply wonder what I'm up to. When you read my blog posts, you're helping me with my recovery. If you have questions about anything I write about, please leave a question or comment. I really enjoy hearing from you.