Resentment and His Nemesis, Work

A couple of weeks ago I started going to the local Clubhouse, which is an international support organization for people with depression and other mental illness. The first time I went, we talked about food and watched Supersize Me. I’ve avoided the movie for years. I mean, it’s not telling me anything I didn’t already know. And it’s a triggering movie for me. All that information, and plenty more than was even covered in that film were playing through my head all last year, as I daily ate about two meals worth of “food” in one sitting, usually at McDonalds, always at a fast food joint. And I’d follow it up by going out to the store, buying a small pizza and a pint of ice cream.

I’d been eating really well for a couple of months up to the point I sat down to watch the film. But honestly, watching it, all I felt was hunger. I mean, the guy’s eating FRIES. All that info was nothing new, but it’s two hours of him eating fries. I was at the crest of about the world’s biggest Jones coming out after we finished watching. The whole world smelled like grease and salt.

There’s a pupuseria a block from the clinic. It’s not as bad as McDonalds by a long shot, but it’s a far cry from how healthy I’d intended to eat that day. And I was planning a trip to the place the next day—a small once a week sort of indulgence. So I was wrestling with the desire to go there. I said I shouldn’t. But then a voice I am well familiar with from this last year chimed in.

“I just know my bus is going to pull up and pull away before I can get it. Fucking stupid world. If that happens, I’m going to take it as a sign I should get pupusas.”

As I got near, the bus pulled up across the street and pulled away.

That voice had been my poisonous inner-adversarialist and the bus leaving set him OFF, “Fuck this, I’m getting food now. If I was supposed to do otherwise, the world should have thought twice before it fucked me and thumbed its nose at me with the bus. Fuck this shit, I’m going to order a mountain of pupuas and ski down them.”

I haven’t heard from him much in the last three months. Unprepared for his re-emergence, I started to autopilot there, guided inexorably to fried cheese. But I found my footing about halfway there.

“No. Frankly, I don’t like this ‘fuck the world if it upsets me’ routine. I lived it for years and I’m done with it. The only person I hurt in that feedback loop was myself. And it left me angry all the time. So no matter the conclusion, the relational stance to the world is toxic and will lead to me being unhappy for the rest of today. Maybe the rest of the week. So, no. Beyond that, I said no. I already outlined what I would eat. I’m not interested in bargaining with myself. No hiccup will change that. Trusting and consigning myself to fate when I have two equal choices that are both healthy and hard and beneficial, that’s wise non-attachment. Blaming an upset on fate in order to rationalize a bad habit is just cowardice and self-destructive nihilism. I said no, and I meant it. The universe didn’t force me to eat pupusas, it forced me to choose without the crutch of the bus. The bus is gone and I *still* say no.”

At the end of the block, the pupusas were to the left and the next bus stop was to the right. I turned right and waved over my shoulder to the pupuseria. I walked on to the bus stop, but as I walked my steps and breath took on a brisk but not rushed regular rhythm, like the beat of a drum, driving. The drum that was my legs and lungs began to beat out a message to me, a chant or mantra: “Ordeal! Ordeal! Ordeal! Ordeal! Ordeal”

I got to the bus stop and walked past it. And I walked past the next one. And the next. The bus came up as I passed perhaps the 6th one along. I waved it on. Ordeal! Ordeal! Ordeal!

I know an hour and a half walk home isn’t really an “ordeal” in the strictest sense, but it occurred to me that toil was healthy and work was joyous and however little an ordeal my walk was, it was more of an ordeal than sitting down to wait for the bus. And the thought of no longer moving, no longer walking on, sitting, seemed odious right then.

At that point, it recalled two very moving things to me. One was a quote from Pema Chödrön’s The Wisdom of No Escape: “A much more interesting, kind, adventurous and joyful approach to life [than trying to avoid all pain and just get comfortable] is to begin to develop our curiosity, not caring whether the object of our inquisitiveness is bitter or sweet. To lead a life that goes beyond pettiness and prejudice and always wanting to make sure that everything turns out on our own terms, to lead a more passionate, full and delightful life than that, we must realize that we can endure a lot of pain and pleasure for the sake of finding out who we are and what this world is…how the whole thing just is. If we’re committed to comfort at any cost, as soon as we come up against the least edge of pain, we’re going to run; we’ll never know what’s beyond that particular barrier or wall or fearful thing.” And that reminded me of my realization that hedonism and asceticism are related, that the richest celebration of life can be the stripping most of the window dressing from it and just relishing the simple process of existing.

The second was three days of ceremony I spent with an old Picuris shaman, Beautiful Painted Arrow, before my 21th birthday. He only talked in metaphors. He never made a narrative out of them, or explained what they meant, but afterwards, you understood. It was one of the most profoundly moving three days of my life. But he was also kind of nuts. He sought visions through ordeal. The stuff he did was terrifying. Starved himself, buried himself alive, hung himself upside down from a tree, walked hundreds of miles without rest. Ordeal was rebirth, to him. He remade himself countless times. His 200 mile walk without rest is what came to mind as I burned past the bus stop and walked home.

The hunger passed, the voice was addressed, the rage at the universe dissipated again, the barrier was passed by, the long walk without rest that is the rest of my life was resumed. And I was filled with joy that the walk promised to be hard.