The Color of Winter V: Willingness

I can't describe how displeased I was as I took a seat in the waiting room. I was lost in that ire, until I heard someone crying to my left. At first, that made me angrier still. Late, odorous, filthy, tired, and now I was being made to wait in what was a nexus of woe, a hospital waiting room. Fucking GREAT. I turned to cast a baleful glance at the person crying.

I froze and fell to pieces in mid-glance.

The person weeping was a developmentally disabled boy of perhaps 14. He was in his wheelchair. Not a hospital wheelchair he was in for liability issues—his lifelong wheelchair. He was slumped over in his own lap. His younger sister was cradling him in her arms. She was dried-eyed and was looking over my shoulder with calm determination—I guessed she'd been through this scenario often enough to be inured to it. On the back of his wheelchair was a very large oxygen tank—I gathered he had enough difficulty breathing he needed to have a large supply at hand at all times. He was sobbing desperately against his sister, but his breathing was a terrible struggle. He wept, snuffled, shook, hacked, wheezed, gasped and cried out breathlessly. The woman at the counter, being helped ahead of me, that caused me so much frustration, was his mother checking him in. Tears filled me. I'm crying again, writing this.

The bottom dropped out of my anger and all my fixation on my difficulties came apart. What the fuck was I doing? What did I have to be anxious about? I needed a shower, had a sore throat and was late for dinner. It beat a large dose of perspective into me. I don't suppose that's surprising. But it occurred to me how much all our suffering would diminish if we'd have the mindful presence to step more often outside of our own narratives and offer consolation to one another.

I closed my eyes and pictured myself breathing in his despair, his pain, his suffering. Breathing it in like a poisonous black smoke, taking it from him into myself. And I pictured myself breathing out clean, crisp spring air, clear and sweet—breathing it out so that it washed back over him. I held onto that for several minutes. And then I prayed.

“Universe, my throat is sore, I'm on disability and I've spent years trying to overcome depression and social anxiety. But I recognize it's all a luxury. You can take my health, take my happiness, take my friends, take years off my life, take my prosperity, my peace of mind, take my home, take away the things that I love, or my sense of purpose. You can have any or all of these things already, I know. You don't need my permission. But I'm offering them freely anyway. Take them, if they'll help. Ease his pain. Take what I have in trade and bring that boy some peace.”

The family eventually went upstairs. The woman behind the counter called me over. She apologized extensively for the time it took. But by then, I'd let all that go. I smiled at her and said it was all part of life. She checked me in, I turned in the vial next door and I rode to dinner, smelly, dirty and late. And I had a great night. The next day I realized I couldn't let all my control mechanisms go. I tightened my grip on my diet and on my sleep schedule. I resumed meditating. I started managing my finances again. And in so doing found I had 500 dollars less than I thought and would be in the red by the time rent was due—I guess the universe took me up on my offer of prosperity. Honestly, it gave me a silly sense of warmth to see my account dry, thinking that.

And with that, my weight began to drop again, a goal coalesced a pace or two ahead of me, and I could hear the ravens laughing in this burgeoning spring.