by Geneen Roth
Talk about pressure.
As I headed into my forties and fifties, people around me were dying or had died. My father, my dear friend Lew, my cat. My aunt Bea. My friend Rosemary. And every time, it was the same: How could a person (even those with four legs) be here one day and gone the next? Death was so irreversible, so forever—unlike, say, buying a pair of shoes from Zappo’s with a 365-day return policy.
But then something unexpected happened. During a routine medical procedure my throat closed, my heart rate skyrocketed, my blood pressure dropped, and I had the strange sensation of leaving my body. I was conscious enough to realize that this was the Big It: I was dying. I remember being surprised that it was happening so quickly, and on an ordinary day in September. (I was hoping for harps and orchids and long soulful glances of loved ones when I died, not a chilly, antiseptic examination room with a nurse with a purple happy face pinned on her smock and a doctor with a wandering eye who kept imploring me to look at him.)
Although there were many compelling insights during and after that near-death experience, one that has remained with me is the visceral understanding that all my years of being death-obsessed weren’t actually about dying or death; they were about life. They weren’t about fear of the end, they were about longing to be awake in the middle (also known as the present). I wanted, as the poet Mary Oliver says, to spend my life “married to amazement,” not wedded to regret or exhaustion.
After the medical procedure I realized that this life wasn’t a dress rehearsal for some bigger, better promise around the corner. This was it, and my breaths were numbered. I didn’t know how many breaths I had left—an eighty-year-old person takes about 672,768,000 breaths in a lifetime, which meant I’d used up three quarters of my actuarially allotted breaths—but it became apparent that no matter how charming I was or how many organic pomegranates I ate, not dying was not an option.
Over and over, with each day and each choice, I asked myself: Is this something on which I want to spend the breaths I have left?
Within a few days of being home from the hospital, I made a list of what I loved. Of what I would have regretted not doing (more of) had I died in the examination room. The list was short: being with my husband, family, and friends; playing with my dog; being outside; writing and teaching. I began quitting things in which I didn’t want to participate. I began saying no to parties I didn’t want to go to, invitations I didn’t want to accept. I quit a graduate program in which I was enrolled, and I started working on a book I’d wanted to write for years. I spent more time with trees, particularly a maple tree in our driveway. I told my husband regularly what I cherished about him and our life together. Over and over, with each day and each choice, I asked myself: Is this something on which I want to spend the breaths I have left?
Eight years have passed and I am still asking that question. Not always, of course. Sometimes when my husband and I are fighting, revenge supplants breaths in my mind. But even then I frequently pull myself back from the brink and remember that we are only alive for a brief run, and I don’t want to miss a breath.
As I become curious (rather than reactive) about my catastrophic tilt, I see that at its core is a frightened ghost child living in a family in which each day felt like the end of days.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
* * *
Waiting for the Apocalypse
Since childhood I’ve been enthralled by disaster scenarios and fantasies of what I would do and where I would go when things got too terrible to stay. I’m not sure if it was knowing that a few dozen relatives were killed in Auschwitz because they didn’t leave Germany in time, or that living with my abjectly miserable-with-each-other parents unhinged my nervous system, but I lived in anticipation of the next cataclysmic shoe to drop. I ran away twice, once when I was eight and got as far as the end of the block before my uncle Murray saw me, asked where I was going with my pink-flowered suitcase, and coaxed me back with the promise of Hostess cupcakes with white squiggles on top. (Even then, the lure of cupcakes trumped my best intentions.) The second time I ran away, I was sixteen and made it as far as a hotel in Manhattan—being a stowaway on a train wasn’t my style—but since I was using my mother’s credit card, I wasn’t exactly hard to find. As I walked into the hotel room, my mother called and said, “Get home this INSTANT!” And that was that.
Regardless of any tilt toward catastrophe, however, the truth remains that on any ordinary day, multiple, unanticipated disasters are lurking: car and bicycle accidents, a sudden heart attack while on an airplane or treadmill, someone we know/love getting run over by a drunk driver. Add to that the danger of falling in the bathroom, hitting one’s head and getting a brain injury—and it’s a miracle that any of us get out of bed in the morning. Still, despite the incipient terrors of living in this vulnerable human body, most of us manage rather well by engaging two highly effective defense mechanisms: denial and repression. We keep having babies, making plans for the future, living as if death only happens to other people. We push scary scenarios out of our minds.
Enter climate science.
My friend Lorraine reels off another climate-science fact every time we talk: a hundred kinds of plants and animals are going extinct every day; honeybee colonies are collapsing; shelves of Arctic glaciers are crashing into the ocean at a much faster rate than anyone ever imagined. Lorraine thinks that the people who are dying now of cancer, Parkinson’s, and Alzheimer’s are the lucky ones. “They are dying with people they love around them. The rest of us will be dying long, drawn-out, horrific climate-related deaths,” she says.
Lorraine implores me to move to Australia, where she lives, because “at least no one will nuke Australia; it’s not important enough. Also, the weather is beautiful and although climate change will also wreak its havoc here, you’ll most likely have a few more months to live than if you stay in California.”
“What about all those spiders and snakes and sharks?” I ask, reeling off what I know about Australia’s poisonous creatures from a website I recently discovered: “Australia is home to the ten deadliest animals in the world. All of those animals want you dead. There is a reason Australia is surrounded by nothing but water. God is trying to protect you from the hell trapped within.” Even Bill Bryson, one of my favorite authors, wrote about the fact that all of the most poisonous creatures on earth live in Australia, while also proclaiming that he loved the country itself.
When I acknowledge that there really is a chance that we may not have much longer on this earth, it forces me into unspeakable gratitude for being given this much time.
As susceptible as I am to disaster scenarios, I know that making decisions from fear is a terrible idea. I tell Lorraine the story of my friend Sally’s next-door neighbor who moved to higher ground during the 1982 mudslides in Santa Cruz, and within twenty-four hours was dead from her safer house collapsing while the house from which she moved still stood. “Isn’t it conceivable,” I ask Lorraine, “that Matt and I could move to Australia for safety’s sake and die within days from a poisonous snake bite?” “I suppose it is,” she answers, “but at some point, you make a decision based on probabilities.”
To educate myself about probabilities, I read Bill McKibben’s The End of Nature, Naomi Klein’s This Changes Everything, David Suzuki’s The Sacred Balance, as well as dozens of articles by concerned scientists, including one by Yale University scientist Wei Liu, who warns that the collapse of a vital Atlantic Ocean current would create an ice age for the Northern Hemisphere.
And while there are people—Naomi Klein is among them—who are still hopeful we can turn this ship around, the trajectory of history and corporate greed is not in the earth’s favor. “We’re in a giant car heading towards a brick wall and everyone is arguing where they’re going to sit,” says David Suzuki.
For years, I tried and failed miserably at being an activist, but the more marches and meetings I attended, the more enraged I became and the more my stance became one of us an
d them, which was the very same as that of the oil companies and polluters. Although I don’t exactly know what actions to take now, I am certain that stoking hatred will make me bitter and even more obstreperous than I already am. I also know, from years of working with addiction, that being against what’s apparently wrong is less effective than being for what isn’t. But that doesn’t cut the loop of the catastrophic thinking or the intense desire to repress it all by distracting myself with pretty things to see or wear or eat.
My friend Jeff says, “Every time the world around me gets too dark, I think, ‘Time to plan a trip to an exciting place!’ ” He’s been to all seven continents and five oceans many times and is now about to visit the Amazon to swim with the pink dolphins. “Would you and Matt like to come?” he asks. The thought of swimming in the Amazon brings back memories of the multiple times I’ve contracted amoebic dysentery from doing exotic things like swimming in the Amazon, and I politely decline. But that leaves me alternately pretending that life as we know it has not changed, and convinced that since we will all be dead in ten years, I might as well drink tequila (before the agave plant becomes extinct) and eat chocolate (before the cacao bean vanishes).
And yet, I don’t know anyone in my community who wants to discuss the end of days. I feel like a mad doomsday hysteric until I remember that according to Bart Ehrman, a religious scholar, Jesus was a doomsday prophet. This comforts me immensely, not only because that was more than two thousand years ago and we are still here, but also because if someone as illuminated as Jesus believed in the apocalypse, I figure I’m in good company.
Given that a nuclear bomb has not yet hit and there still seem to be at least a few more years of the emerald sweetness of life here on earth, the question becomes what to do now. Do I talk about climate science with my friends, despite their not wanting to hear? Do I walk around in a tempest of grief and anxiety? Distract myself with exotic trips like swimming with pink dolphins in the Amazon? Continue to sign petitions, give money to animal and earth causes? Is that enough? If this is truly the end of days, what would I do or say differently from what I am doing and saying now?
As I become curious (rather than reactive) about my catastrophic tilt, I see that at its core is a frightened ghost child living in a family in which each day felt like the end of days. Anticipating the next worst thing colored every breath, every interaction, every meal. As soon as I allow myself to name and feel the imprint of that conditioning, kindness emerges for the child, the parents, and the situation itself. And the madness unwinds, since I am no longer either identified with the hysteria or fighting against it.
There is awe here as well. For the mist drifting above the tree line outside my window. For the one brave rose left in my winter garden. For the water falling from the sky. When I acknowledge that there really is a chance that we may not have much longer on this earth, it forces me into unspeakable gratitude for being given this much time. Or any time at all. Fear and anxiety are replaced by grief for the damage we’ve wrought, and a resolve to do what I can to protect what remains.
Thirty years ago, I read a Ram Dass quote (that I have never been able to locate; this is a paraphrase): whether we are sailing into the New Age or heading toward Armageddon, our work is exactly the same: to quiet the drums of fear, speak from a soft heart, and act from our shared humanity.
Yes. Yes.
When we’re convinced we have to earn joy, we don’t notice the ten thousand places in which it is already waiting, asking, waving for our attention.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
* * *
What Isn’t Wrong
The rain in the South of France that summer was relentless; my feet were never dry, and because I had packed as if I was going to the Riviera instead of a monthlong retreat in a moldy brown tent at Thich Nhat Hanh’s Plum Village Center, I didn’t have a raincoat. Morning meditations at six a.m. were cold, wet, and clammy; evening meditations were waterlogged and frosty. Although I was supposed to be focusing on my breath or listening to a talk about the seven heaven realms, I was convinced I was trapped in a clammy Buddhist hellhole.
One sodden morning Thich Nhat Hanh changed topics from Buddhist sutras to toothaches. “How many of you don’t have a toothache right now?” he asked.
I can’t remember whether everyone raised their hands, but there was definitely a quorum of nontoothache candidates in the room.
Then he said, “When we have a toothache, all we can think about is going to the dentist or taking medication to stop the pain. But when we don’t have a toothache, we don’t appreciate the many benefits of the nontoothache state. So, please, turn to one of your brother or sister sangha members and take five minutes to appreciate the state of not-a-toothache.”
And just like that, as I listed all the things that weren’t wet and didn’t hurt or ache, I noticed myself feeling light and undeniably happy. It was still raining and my feet were still damp, but my attention was no longer a constellation of what was wrong. Once again, I realized that it wasn’t the dampness, it’s never the dampness (and that doesn’t mean I would choose to wear wet shoes or go back to Plum Village); dampness isn’t miserable, it’s just dampness. That’s it. That’s all.
At its most basic, meditation is about watching thoughts without identifying with them (i.e., taking yourself to be them). You notice the mind activity itself, and that you have a choice—you’ve always had a choice—about where to direct your attention. You can engage with the content of your thoughts (i.e., I am going to get pneumonia if I stay wet like this for one more second) or you can notice what isn’t wrong (the fact that you are breathing, a bird is chirping, you are still aboveground). You can break the trance by using the senses: seeing color, hearing the scrape of a pen across the page, smelling the air when it rains. You can come back to what you’ve always had, what’s always been here, and, in T. S. Eliot’s words, “. . . know the place for the first time.”
After so many years of so many practices and so many prayers, I have only one left: let me remember to pay attention to the ordinary, not just to the extraordinary.
My friend Kate, who has spent five years undergoing one grueling chemotherapy treatment after another, as well as their attendant exhaustion, hope, disappointment, and discomfort, and has decided to stop all treatment, said, “It’s taken me so long to realize that just being able to walk around TJ Maxx and buy a black tote with outside pockets makes me indescribably happy. I’ve been so pitched to the future, to when or if I get well, that I’ve missed so many walks, sounds, and totes. In the name of extending my life for five or ten years, I’ve missed the one I’ve had.”
When we think a meaningful life is about grander things than being able to walk around TJ Maxx, we miss the joy of being able to walk at all. When we’re convinced we have to earn joy, we don’t notice the ten thousand places in which it is already waiting, asking, waving for our attention.
After so many years of so many practices and so many prayers, I have only one left: let me remember to pay attention to the ordinary, not just to the extraordinary. To finding the perfect tote with outside pockets and to the sound of my feet walking, click click click, as I do.
As I skulked to the bathroom, I decided that I really was hopeless, a spiritual failure. Then, as I was brushing my teeth, I thought, but in that case, why not be hopeless in a blue vest?
CHAPTER NINETEEN
* * *
The Blue Vest
We saw it in the window of a store on a side street in San Francisco: the piece of clothing for which I’d been waiting without knowing I’d been waiting. “Come and be enthralled,” it whispered. “Let my fringes anoint you.” I slipped into the floor-length vest like a swan would slip into her wings, and I glided around the room as if the store was my lake. As I passed the rows of jackets and racks of shoes, I felt like Harry Potter in his invisibility cloak, except that mine was made of manifest blue enchantment.
“Do you like it?” I asked my husband when I emerged
from the swoon. Although Matt’s wardrobe consists mainly of rugby shirts, khaki pants, and New Balance shoes in various stages of wear, he has uncanny wisdom when it comes to women’s sartorial plumage.
“Where might you wear this?” he asked, eyeing the shimmering blue fabric. “It doesn’t seem appropriate to wear around the house or to Whole Foods . . .”
Oh yeah, I thought, that’s right. We live in the country, down a mile-long gravel road where our daily companions are owls, oak trees, and deer. When I thought about flouncing around on gravel in a silky vest, it broke the spell; I felt like my student Gloria, who said that when she eats a piece of chocolate she feels like Cinderella becoming a princess, but when the chocolate is gone she feels like a pauper again. I told Scott, the salesperson (we were now on a first-name basis), that although I really did like the vest and was surprised my husband didn’t have to don his sunglasses to tolerate its blinding beauty, I’d call in a few days to see if it was still there.
At dinner with friends that night the conversation was lively, but visions of blue distracted me: the way the vest pooled around my legs, changed colors, became indigo then cobalt then slate. Wearing it is like wearing the ocean, I thought, as I took a bite of Caesar salad. And although it’s true, I can’t wear it to plant radishes in the garden, I have to wear something to restaurants or lectures; why not this?
