Hope and Fear

There is a lot going on and a lot not happening.  I don't see my surgeon to finalize this plan until next Monday.  Until then I only have a guess as to when surgery will be (we have a "penciled in" date) and where surgery will be (where I had it last time?).  In the meantime I am going forward like this is really happening.

This weekend I was searching handicap bathroom aids on Amazon.  Going to need a toilet seat riser and some grab bars for awhile.  And I will never stand in the shower again so there's a thing.  I particularly enjoy all my amazon toilet seat ads I see everywhere on the internet.  Good times, thanks Amazon.  Nothing like composing a work email while I'm looking at a toilet seat!

I am currently reading Pema Chodron's "When Things Fall Apart" which is a Buddhist look at suffering.  She writes about hope and fear being connected and encourages people to embrace hopelessness.  When I first read that chapter I was so sure she was wrong.  Embrace hopelessness??  That's crazy!  All I have right now is hope.

But the more I ruminate on this idea the more I think I know what she is talking about.  Buddhism is all about living in the moment.  All we have is this day and this moment, all we have is right now.  Hope is not about this moment, rather it is about something in the future.  Hope is looking for things to be different then right now.  Hope is a way of avoiding the embrace of the now.

I only have now with my foot.  I have a guess how this will go, that I only have 15 days left.  I only have 15 24 hour periods with this foot.  And in each of those days I will only have that one day to be in.  I can't look ahead.  I don't know what sufferings or struggles will come.  I can't look behind, there is no way to change the path I have already walked.  I only have today and the choices and thoughts of right now.  I am not ready to embrace hopelessness but I think I understand what Pema is talking about.

On my walk this morning I was not living in the moment, rather I was thinking about other days.  First I imagined talking my "walk" in my wheelchair and what that would be like.  And then I said to myself, by next October you will be walking like normal with your prosthetic.  And then I saw a little yellow moth flutter by and I realized it won't be here next October, it only has today.  It reminded me of my need to just be in today.  I don't know what any other day's walk will be, I only have today's walk.

The moth reminded me of where Jesus tells us not to worry.  That part about the birds of the air and the lilies of the field and today having enough worries and not to worry about tomorrow.  That is the same thing Pema was talking about with embracing hopelessness.  The birds and flowers don't have tomorrow.  And really, we don't either.  We only have today.  We only have this one moment.

So I am working to embrace hopelessness.  To let fear be.  To live just this one day I have.  I don't know what the future will bring.  But I know that if I am there, I will need to live in just that one day as well.  We only have this one day, there is nothing to look forward to.  I know it sounds depressing . . . but it isn't.  Its actually it's own weird little hope.