health and wellbeing – Page 2

It’s day 10 and I can’t decide if I hate Jeff Warren or is he like one of those popular kids I use to pretend to hate in high school, but in reality wanted to be like and liked by them. And then there’s his girlfriend, Tamara Levitt, with her calm sexy voice dropping pearls of wisdom at the end of each session. Together they are the bane of my early morning existence.

I so want to sit down and start my day with twenty minutes of quite energizing meditation. Something that will take me through the day in a Zen like state that has others saying to themselves, “he’s like Outcast, just the coolest motherfunker on the planet”

I want to be Jeff, cool and in control, with a touch of Tamara, who always has just the right antidotal story to illustrate a point. Instead my brain and thoughts are a jumbled garden with bees alighting on flower after flower never taking the time to settle before they are off to the next thought.

I’ve never actually met Jeff or Tamara and despite my time with them in my head over the last ten day, I have no idea if they are boyfriend and girlfriend.

The last ten days sitting on my living room floor in the last of the night’s darkness at 5:30am with these two in my ears coaxing me towards a calmer more enlightened me have been unexpectedly hard. So far I’ve learned about equanimity (I don’t have it), my homebase, which feel likes a house party, and popping out of my thoughts with inner smoothness. I hear it, understand it but I can’t get it.

You only have to try and mediate or just try to sit still with your eyes closed for ten minutes to realize that mediating is hard work. Jeff reminds me of this daily, that mediating is about using brain muscle we didn’t know we had, before he puts me through another round of exercises that leaves my gray matter mushier than when we started.

I’ve come to befriend Jeff and Tamara via the Calm app. With their help and too hold myself accountable, I have paid up front for a whole year of this subscription based service that is going to teach me to meditate and in turn find a new inner calm.

That may sound a bit cliche and hokey but it’s not far from the truth. The last year I’ve spent a lot of time with my own thoughts as I laid around recovering from surgery, stretched out on a table getting blasted with radiation or just walking the neighborhood trying to get my strength back. All of this down time has helped me realize is that I don’t know myself as well as I thought I did. Crazy, after 52 years, I don’t know myself completely. I am hoping that a deliberate dive into meditating will help me get to know me better.

It’s a process. I get it. Ten days is just a drop in the bucket, but come on brain, calm down and throw me a bone.

Whoooaaa! What just happened?

It’s the next day. I stopped writing the above because trying to explain mediation, much less understand it on a personal level and how to do it correctly was making my brain hurt. Yet, some how today, early this morning it all clicked. Just for a second but somehow on day 11 I meditated (or at least what I think it did) for a split second and then it was gone like a tendril of smoke I could see it drifting further and further away from me until the wind broke it in to a thousand indistinguishable particles.

The rest of the meditation session was not nearly as fulfilling as my mind kept wandering (according to Jeff and Tamara wandering is part of the process as you should acknowledge it and gently bring yourself back to your home base) back to that split second.

Imagining putting together that split second with another split second and another and evidentially those seconds become minutes have me excited for this small break through that happened while seated on the dog bed in my living room this morning.

I really don’t hate Jeff and Tamara but like anyone that pushes you into a state of discomfort there is a certain amount of resistance you have to that person as they push you. Once the break throughs happen the resistances become a challenge.

“Is that all you got?” becomes my mindset.

And yes I know that meditation is not a competitive sport but if the push to do better moves me to a place of quite contemplative deeper and better understanding of myself I’ll take it.

I tried to laugh about it
Cover it all up with lies
I tried to laugh about it
Hiding the tears in my eyes
‘Cause boys don’t cry

— Robert Smith/The Cure

I spent the first fifty years of my life trying not to cry, because boys don’t cry.

That is not to say I never cried. I cried when I got spanked as a little kid. Yep, I was spanked as a kid and for better or worse I seemed to have come out okay.

I didn’t cry when I broke my leg in two place during a high school soccer game.

I did cry why when my dog, Flea, died.

I cried again when my dog, Boo, died.

I didn’t really cry when my dad died. I did get really drunk. And then about three weeks later I cried while sitting in my living room by myself.

But for the most part, I haven’t cried that much over the last fifty year. Again, boys don’t cry.

That is until I got cancer. I didn’t cry when I found out I had cancer. In fact I worked the rest of the day and then went home and told my wife I had cancer. She cried.

Somewhere along the way after I got cancer, I gave myself permission to start crying. I still haven’t cried because I have (had) cancer, but I did cry when I had to tell others I had cancer. Seeing the pain and hurt on friends and family’ faces was too much. Screw you Robert Smith, boys do cry.

Robert Smith/The Cure 'Boys Don't Cry' Sticker | Etsy

Now that I have given myself permission to cry it is was easier than not crying.

Giving myself permission became extremely important after my surgery and during my radiation treatment. These are the things I gave myself permission to do…

Feel shitty. No more tough guy and suffering through it. When I feel like crap now I acknowledge it and usually go to bed or get on the sofa to allow myself to heal.
Worry. There’s a lot of stuff to worry about when you have cancer. And people who say, “Don’t worry. It will all be okay” are generally full of shit and don’t really know that much.
Sleep. See number 1 above. Sleep is often the magic bullet to feeling shitty. 2020 the year of COVID, cancer and naps. Naps for the win!
Share my feelings and be vulnerable. My wife and sister say I have gotten much better at this. They are both smarter than me so I will take them at their word. I think this blog is partially to thank for this.
Do what feels right for myself. At the end of the day I had to own my own health and wellbeing.
Be scared. This is like worrying on steroids.
Accept and Trust. At some point I had to stop googling and reading about cancer. Second guessing everything was not helping. I had to trust my doctors and their decisions. I had to learn to accept help from others.
Cry. Because even with permission to do all of the above sometimes boys do need to cry.