Month: October 2021

Describing a good friend is like holding water from a mountain stream in your hands. You can touch the essence, you can cradle the wonder, you can even sip the clean majesty of the transparently authentic – but the experience is fleeting, it humbles any effort at definition, and it leaves the soul with a unsteadying sense of impermanence.

I first selected the word “steadying” rather than its opposite. Only when I let myself recall the recent sensation of releasing a lifelong friend from a departing hug did I recognize how profound a feeling it is to let go of something which cannot be held. Despite the unwelcome aura of separation, and the visceral acknowledgment that moments of grace move through us like rain descending in an autumn morning, there remains an acceptance of the unstable, a peace inside the impossible, a safety nestled in the tingle of connections which always will be.

Can there be security found in the inherent wobbliness of individual being? Is the ricketiness of difference in some way an entree into the groundedness of the universal?

The Celts believed that the portal to the spirit world opened on or near November 1st. And so they celebrated Samhain (pronounced sah-win), a celebration of “summer’s end”, the harvest, and the transition to winter and eventual renewal. They were not alone; many other cultures have marked this time of year as one of magic and mystery, a time to remember those who have passed before us, an annual opportunity to remind ourselves that the threshold between the physical here and the mystical there is less impenetrable than we like to think. The Day of the Dead (Dia de los Muertos), All Saints’ Day and All Souls’ Day, and, yes, Halloween are all traditions across peoples and belief systems dating back to early human consciousness and our desire to know, to revere, to seek certainty and protection. And, of course, to have fun. The costumes that have become part of annual All Hallows’ Eve parties, trick-or-treating, and other festivals are meant to honor those who have died but also to poke fun at the living. Tonight is a night to dress as someone else. It is an evening to laugh at or with death – but to do so in a gentle, sometimes superstitious, and often respectful way. Because there is a liminal quality to the air every All Hallows’ Eve, a saturation in the colors, a special way we light the edge of the encroaching night for northern hemisphere winter. We may smile. We may mark the evening with candy, sweets, and small bonfires. We may even go to great lengths to paint faces and wear the markings of the past or the mysterious or the sometimes scary and macabre. We still feel, however, the ritual rise of the small hairs on the back of our necks. We still reflect, if asked, on the passing of those we have loved. We may even still say a small prayer for the souls of those who have departed and for the lives of many who still physically remain.

This year, I will be thinking about people I have been fortunate to know as friends. In the spirit of my Celtic ancestors, I will be remembering the embrace we have shared, whether last week or last century. For this 2021 “summer’s end”, I will remind myself how blessed I have been to have, hold, and experience the kindness that is possible in a world open to beauty and mystery.

And there it is. How remarkable! Already I feel the unsteadying comfort of life beyond my own physical boundary. Like a taproot for an aging tree, there is always moisture within reach, even if I cannot see the source.

I first found the book on a decorative stand next to Mom’s favorite reading spot. She had developed an interest in many subjects later in her life, including the puzzle form known as Sudoku. “Brain exercise,” she once told me. I picture her sitting with eraser ready pencil in a large floral arm chair, one of the most comfortable pieces of furniture ever made. She finishes the final puzzle in a series for experienced Sudoko players and considers its successor perched atop the stack of books to her right: Sudoku for “blackbelts”. 2nd degree. For Sudoku martial artists. You’re next, Mom tells the crease-free paperback. But next never comes, or at least not as anticipated; a devastating stroke cuts short what might have been a dazzling progression in the puzzling arts during Mom’s senior years.

So the martial challenge fell to me. And, contrary to some of my previous demonstrations of headstrong engagement in things labelled difficult, I embraced this new opportunity cautiously, with reasonable pace. Meaning I took it slowly, even reluctantly. How hard could something so seemingly simple be? Start small, with easy puzzles, just to learn the rules. Then advance, as spare time and motivation permitted. Only when I felt ready did I actually open the advanced blackbelt book – have I mentioned it was for 2nd degree students? – and test my ability. The first five puzzles went smoothly, pulling me into the martial Sudoku world, graduating me to the mysteries of the remaining 295 challenges. I did not get them all correct, no. But I held my own for many (?most), especially the ones in the end of the collection. Along the way, I learned new tips, techniques, and ways to solve what I assumed were progressively challenging puzzles. And I did it my way too, when I had time, with snatches of fifteen minutes here and there over weeks, then months, and, yes, years. From start to finish, the entire effort has taken me a decade. In fact, just last week, I entered the final number in the final puzzle, number 300, completing what I thought was both the book and my 2nd degree Sudoku blackbelt training.

I’ve told no one. But, inside, I knew that I had done something noteworthy. On my own, without resorting to any online help, I had cracked the secrets of Sudoku, without peeking at the answers to each puzzle in the back of the black belt challenge book.

This has been no small feat! Hours of time I could have used for other forms of learning, reading, or mindless entertainment were devoted to breaking the Sudoko code. It’s been just me against the empty boxes on each page, my patience, fortitude, and logic matched against the few numbers already placed inside each puzzle. Mine has been a journey of self-discovery. I told myself, repeatedly, that I could figure Sudoku out, that I could learn the techniques to solve any puzzle presented, if only I sat with the puzzle long enough, and let the tactics present themselves.

Which they often did! Even working through the final puzzles of the book, I was finding new techniques, new patterns hidden inside the numbers, tiny adaptations to ruling in or out one small piece of the pattern that flipped a puzzle from impenetrable to easily solvable. And the solution for the final puzzle, the grand number 300, presented itself without much effort. When I filled the last box in number 300, I smiled at the number strings on the page before me, then closed the book with a sense of mastery. “We made it, Mom,” I said aloud. “We’re 2nd degree Sudoku blackbelts.”

Achieving a blackbelt in any discipline is an arduous task. Last year, for example, I successfully reached the level of first degree blackbelt in southern Shaolin style Kung Fu. That accomplishment took multiple years and involved the downing of many servings of humble pie. Now here I was, just fourteen months later, a double blackbelt. True, the Sudoku recognition was not conferred by an external source; the blackbelt title was just something printed atop the book cover. Nonetheless, it still represented an achievement of some magnitude, regardless of its somewhat unofficial status. And it had taken me three times as long as my Kung Fu blackbelt. There have been lessons from both these journeys. Perseverance matters. With age may come patience. Be careful you don’t imagine you have accomplished more than you really have.

What?

Ok, perseverance and patience are important lessons, yes. And they lead to sometimes impressive results. But a blackbelt, even when earned through awesome effort and fairly phenomenal skill development, does not confer supreme status on the awardee. It doesn’t even ensure that said awardee is consistently skilled at their respective art form. As proof, I share what happened when I returned to the beginning of the Sudoku black belt book and decided to apply my formidable experience to puzzles left incomplete during my decade of study. Nothing. That’s right. Zip. No differences. In the past three days, I have erased three puzzles that first left me in a dead end only to find myself, despite application of my techniques, in apparently fresh dead ends – years after my initial failure. Shouldn’t the earlier puzzles be easier? Maybe. How could I storm through the final dozen puzzles only to be mired in mistake and confusion when I revisited puzzles back in the first twenty? No explanation. I have erased one of the those puzzles at least three times, reapproaching it with fresh eyes and steadfast confidence. The results, sadly, have been the same.

What then have I learned, really, over the decade of my Sudoku journey? Have I sufficiently mastered the form to deserve the lofty recognition of 2nd degree blackbelt?

Clearly not. Or clearly not so certainly.

I am a better Sudoku player – that is probably true. I am still drawn to the challenge of correctly completing a pattern of 81 numbers for which there is just one solution – that is also likely true (although my wounded pride does temper my current enthusiasm, I must admit). I still miss the opportunity to discuss Sudoku tactics with my mom – ah, well, that is definitely the case.

And there is this: the distinction of blackbelt, for a martial or other art form, is not a recognition of arriving but rather an acknowledgment of beginning. Because real expertise, the kind that needs not boast or wave attention to itself, never looks backwards. It is always pressing forward, exploring the limits of its ability, testing and redefining the potential for its growth. The honor of achievement is not meant to be worn, as an adornment. Instead, it is intended to be built upon, as a motivation. It is available for use, as a leverage. It is ready to be settled into our lives as a fortification of our foundation, for continued learning and development.

Perhaps I should get some formal coaching for my Sudoku black belt training. After all, that’s what I did for my Kung Fu training, an experience which taught me, above all else, that we are not meant to discover many of life’s lessons on our own.

They are out there. Daily, sometimes hourly reminders of how easy it is to get stuck inside moments. Old ones, that is. Previous pieces of the past that may feel fresh but are actually quite stale. Small bits of yesterday, last year, last decade, maybe even last lifetimes that replay without rewinding, that return without invitation or practice, snippets of experience that masquerade as something new, as scraps of today, as slices of now that are really not now at all. They are dead pieces of before. They should remain dead pieces of before. Yet they seem very much alive in the present. Perhaps because we treat them as if they are unexpected, welcome them as if we are surprised.

Time loops. Cycles of feeling, of emotion, of thought that repeat themselves. Over. And over. And over in our lives.

I called them reminders but that is not how I necessarily experience them. It takes recognition to stir awareness of repetition. And awareness is vital to the cognitive experience of distinction. Of separation. I cannot become observer of my mental and emotional patterns until I permit myself space to simply acknowledge what I am feeling, how I am thinking. With acknowledgement, however, comes opportunity for pause. For reflection.

For change.

As much as I dislike admitting it, my days are checkered with a fair share of time loops. This past week, I attended a medical conference that should have felt fresh, different: it was centered on the wellbeing of physicians and everyone was required to be vaccinated and to wear masks. That is a scenario not previously part of my past experience! And yet, sitting in a large ballroom of a grand hotel, chairs separating participants by three feet, my own mask pinching at the bridge of my nose, my mind intermittently played its time loop games, vaulting me into feeling states from decades before, those feeling states associating me yesterday and today with the spaces and places I have traversed decades earlier in my training and career. It was as if certain parts of my past, huddled quietly into the recesses of my consciousness, felt compelled to receive recognition. They wanted me to tell colleagues some stories of my training. They urged me to talk more than to listen. They wanted to have their moment of acknowledgment.

Or it may have been closure. But how often do we talk of things that are remembrances of times past only to have those remembrances make unwarranted claims on how we feel and act today, who we are in this moment, and what we should be in the next? Telling a story from forty years before does not ensure it will reach its conclusion. A desire for a postscript, an edited contemporary version of that story, loiters, lingers, and sometimes lurks in the shadows of ego, of subconscious, or whatever word best describes that lagoon of past life that is me, that was me, that should be released from me, that behaves as if it has some claim on me today.

These are not necessarily traumatic events. They are not even momentous events. Just slivers of experience that, once etched into the compressed sediment of my personal evolution, are poised to shine in the light of remembrance should I only point its beam in their direction.

“When I was a surgical intern,” I heard myself say, “I was once assisting in a cardiac bypass with one of the leading cardiac surgeons at the time. There was a crowded team of surgeons in sterile garb around the patient’s open chest.

‘Hold this’, the prominent surgeon said to me. In my gloved left hand he placed a silk suture that was helping gently lift something inside the patient’s chest, something of which I had no view. I was told to stand behind the lead surgeon, to reach around his left side, to keep the right amount of tension on the suture and not break sterile technique. Meaning that my front could in no way touch his side or back.

Was I doing anything useful or was this some test?

‘Keep up that tension’, I heard. ‘And stay awake.’

I’m not very tall. And my arms aren’t very long. Yet somehow I managed to hold something I couldn’t see, to do this for who knows how long, to stare at the surgeon’s left shoulder blade without touching it. And not fall asleep. To this day, I don’t know if I was doing anything useful. How could I? Except someone later told me that I was. Only the sterile fingers of my left hand were needed. And my hand was smaller than others. So many hand was the one balanced in mid-air at the brink of a man’s open chest. The rest of me wasn’t needed. Just my fingertips.”

This happened in 1985. And yet here I was, telling the story many years later, a story I had thought forgotten, a memory I had long since filed (or so I thought) into the shred or discard bin of my life.

Yet when I mimicked the position of my arm and hand, curled carefully around the side of a friend at the conference, I could have easily been there, then, in the operating room of 1985. I could even be there now as a type these words.

But I am not. I cannot be. I must release the feeling of the cramped fingers, hand, and arm, the smell of the room, the sounds of those in it, the thoughts that ran through the wiring of what we call mind and let them all belong to then, to before, to the collective archives of time and our human subscription to it.

So I flex the fingers of my left hand, take a long breath, appreciate the perspective out the window of the bedroom where I sit, and I am thankful for the opportunity to snip that loop from the shaggy wig of life that likes to hide today from yesterday, the tangle of time that also veils the view of forward, of future, of what may be if I just let it. And I smile at the image of the past resignedly sweeping that snip along with others from the floor beneath and behind me. I hear yesterday sigh as it gathers the curls of released time loops in its cosmic dustpan and disposes of them in ways I do not need to know or imagine. And I purposefully press new loops of potential into the film canister of tomorrow.

I smile at the great fortune I have to be part of something yet to be.