Pain and Suffering.

The second of the Five Remembrances in Buddhism as taught by the Venerable Thich Nhat Hanh states, “I am of the nature to have ill health. There is no way to escape ill health.”

Ill health can be anything from the common cold to cancer, or in my most recent situation, injury.

On October 2nd 2010 I was setting up my drumset in a confined space. When I stood, my back was stiff. I gave it little thought since these things happen from time to time and I usually recover relatively quickly, and a few days later I thought recovery was near. However, the stiffness became pain which worsened and by the morning of the 17th, it was excruciating! I placed a call to the chiropractor I sometimes see and left a message on his answering machine. I then e-mailed my friends who do Reiki and asked for some positive vibes and good Mojo.

By my second visit to the chiropractor on October 19, it was determined that I had sprained a disk in my back but total recovery is expected. It is important to note that this sprain was deemed “minor” by the chiropractor.

Although I am advised against sitting to avoid compression, my life is only temporarily inconvenienced by this.

When I think of the many people I know or have known who have been in serious pain, I cannot help but think of how unpleasant their lives must have been. Yet, the majority of these people put on a cheerful smile and went on with their lives. There are of course, exceptions, but I am amazed at those who managed to be happy and cheerful despite their pain.

When my chiropractor said it was a “mild” sprain, I commented that I couldn’t even imagine what a serious sprain must feel like… or anything else such as a deteriorating disk or cancer. Having watched my Father and a few friends grow weak and pass away from cancer I can attest to the pain and suffering they experienced.

What always strikes me when I become ill or injured is how much we seem to take for granted when we are well. Because I am advised at this time against sitting, I spend my time either standing or lying flat with my legs straight. Simple tasks such as putting on socks or tying shoes can be a challenge. Earlier today, I had to squat to retrieve an item from the cupboard and bending my knees was such a pleasant relief. Then I think of Darcy, the guitarist/vocalist in the band I play with who spent several months in a cast for a broken leg and I realize my situation is not bad at all.

While we are all concerned with our own problems, it is probably quite all right to be. Each of us is the one who has to live within our own skin. Many people have experienced the same back pain as I have, but we each experience it differently, from our own unique personal perspective. Others have had broken legs, but have experienced that differently than Darcy has. Others have had cancer and have experienced it differently than Dad did.

We all can also choose to be better prepared to deal with illness and/or injury. With proper diet, exercise, and lifestyle choices we can prevent damage, recover more easily from damage, or have less severe damage. My chiropractor mentioned that I have flexible hamstrings (I always thought they weren’t) and I attribute that to all the cycling I have done in the past five months. I’m sure that will be a factor in my recovery time and could perhaps also have prevented the injury from being far worse than it was.

Since the chiropractor is also a Yoga practitioner and former Yoga teacher, I am going to ask him to prescribe some stretches I can incorporate into my daily life in order to keep flexible. A little weight lifting is probably a good idea too, and certainly adjusting my diet to reduce foods that contribute to inflammation will be taken into consideration.

And, if my recovery is not complete, I will adapt. Pain and suffering can be great motivators in learning to do the things we have always done in new and different ways.

Finally, since we have just recently celebrated the Canadian Thanksgiving, I will give thanks for being as healthy as I am. As the old saying goes, “I was sad because I had no shoes until I met a man that had no feet.”

~Still Wandering…

Giving Thanks

Today is Thanksgiving in Canada.

During my school years, that meant a day off school; a long weekend. As I entered the workforce, nothing changed. As I went into a full time career as a musician, Thanksgiving Day varied from Province to Province, from establishment to establishment. Sometimes we’d have the day off, sometimes not.

If it was a day off, it was spent walking around whatever town or city we would be performing in for the week. Sometimes I would be accompanied by a fellow band member or, if it was a place where we performed frequently, I would call a lady friend to accompany me and go to dinner or a movie after an afternoon of walking or hanging out. If I knew no one in that location, I’d find a museum or art gallery and get a taste of the local culture.

Thanksgiving Day in recent years has become the day I put the lawn furniture and decorations away for winter. Sometimes, if I get my yard work done early, I may take a hike or drive in the country and enjoy the colourful leaves.

Today, I read a piece in the Reader’s Digest about a young man who said his childhood was “lucky.” He qualified that by saying he and his sister had grown up in Canada while his parents were immigrants who grew up without the benefits of the things we take for granted in this country. This young man began a blog a few years ago; a thousand things that are awesome... one posted daily for a thousand days.

While I cannot even begin to aspire to that, I would like to take the opportunity on this Thanksgiving Day to mention a few things for which I am thankful.

First, like the young man in the Reader’s digest article, I am thankful to be a Canadian. As such, I live in a country that is loved and respected worldwide, despite our close geographical and political association with a warring nation.

I am thankful also that my Canadian heritage grants me a free education up to and including high school, and free basic health care. My country won’t let me die just because I can’t afford to pay for treatment.

While I dislike the cold, and find all but one season in Canada just that, I still AM thankful for the three seasons that I shiver. They make the summer all the more enjoyable!

I am thankful that in Canada I can worship the deity of my choice or disregard as I see fit. I can befriend people of all faiths and philosophies and have; Christian, Jew, Muslim, Buddhist, Native American, Atheist... It might earn me the scorn of my peers, but it isn’t illegal.

I am thankful for the good health I enjoy. While in the advanced stages of middle age, I have the “normal” aches and pains associated with my age and geography, but I can still ride my bicycle, log a few kilometres hiking or snowshoeing and I’m not on a regimen of daily medications like many my age or even younger.

I am thankful to have had a stable family environment as a child and teenager. My parents, while smokers, did not drink and provided me with a diet of fresh grown vegetables and homemade bread and baked goods. In some ways, my parents did not prepare me for the world I grew into, but I don’t think they could have; it was so different than their world.

I am thankful to have a healthy intelligence coupled with an above average memory. I can recall song lyrics from the first live performance I played in 1970!

Speaking of performing, I am thankful for my ability to play music. I have had a long and rewarding career in that field, and it’s not over yet.

I am thankful for the many “esoteric” teachings I have received, from Reiki to Taiji and Yoga; from the Law of Attraction to Vibrational Healing; I have learned much and met many wonderful people because of it.

Which brings me to the final yet most important thing for which I am thankful... (Although I would hardly categorize all my wonderful friends as a “thing” to be thankful for.)

Each of you reading this has been a gift and blessing to me. Although many of you have moved to other parts of Canada or other countries, (or if you are still where I started my life and noticing MY absence) you still mean a great deal to me. If I have sent you the link to this blog it is to tell you that very thing.

Today, I have realized I have a great deal to be thankful for. Despite my propensity to sometimes see the glass as, if not half empty, being on its way there, I have more reasons to see the glass as being re-filled as well.

What are you thankful for today? Do you have to think about it or do they come to mind easily? Are you sharing your thanks with special people or are you alone?

And mostly, as a friend pointed out on Twitter earlier today, “I don't believe that 'Thanksgiving' was ever meant to be one day...”

~Still Wandering…

Living Simply.

Everyone is stressed… Too many bills to pay, not enough time to do all we need to do, too much clutter in our homes and offices… Life seems to be an ever-increasing circle of meaningless repetition, spinning faster and faster out of our control. When life gets this way, even the simplest of tasks can seem daunting and un-doable.

Often, while planning to address one issue, we are thinking ahead to the other things that need to be done and we become overwhelmed; simply moving a few magazines from the couch becomes a day-long task… In order to move the magazines, there needs to be a place to put them, but in order to find that, the bookshelf needs to be tidied up. In the process of tidying the bookshelf something else becomes urgent and we become sidetracked, usually with the end result of being less organized and tidy than when we started.

In my case things get out of hand in the summer. The summers where I live seem extremely short and warm sunny weather is appreciated like nothing else. On a sunny day, when I should be mowing the lawn, I am more tempted to get on my bike or take a hike in the forest or along the shore. The end result of course is that eventually the lawn becomes a pressing issue that takes the better part of two days to deal with. Then I have put myself in a position of spending two days doing something that should only take a few hours. Exhausted, I flop onto the couch and read, which leads to a nap and what I’ve been reading stays where it falls. Then I’m back outside trying to squeeze as much as I can out of our short summer.

My friends are all equally busy too. I have three level 2 Reiki students who have been trying for months to coordinate schedules with myself and each other to get together and share some time. Another friend, who I used to see many times a week, I now see perhaps three times a year.

There has been a movement afoot for some time in North America, to “lighten up” our lives and homes, to remove clutter and disorganization and free up some time for personal growth. In recent times, many “successful” people have given up their careers, assets, and belongings to seek out a simpler and possibly more meaningful life.

During my adolescence, there was a movement among the Hippies to move back to the land and give up the trappings of society. Many at that time were escaping the U.S to avoid being drafted into the war in Viet Nam. Today it is not a war in Asia that is being avoided, but enslavement to a life of consumerism and accumulation.

I think the problem is too much television. Not that television is inherently evil; on the contrary, it is a great source of education and entertainment, but we spend far too much time as a society watching it, and the commercials encourage us to buy products we don’t need, maybe even don’t want and will probably never use. This consumer mentality forces us to have too many cars, too many TV sets, too many computers, a swimming pool, a bigger house and so on and so on.... Then when our credit cards are maxed out, we need to work, work, work to pay off the massive debt load. Add children to the mix and the cost of raising them and saving for their University educations and ... well my friends can speak on that better than I can.

If you can get them to spare the time...

~Still Wandering...

Expressing our Emotions

Yesterday, I had an acupuncture appointment with a young woman whom I have known for nearly twenty years. In the time I have known her, I have come to know her brother and parents as well, although it is her mother to whom I am the closest.

This young woman and her family are people I consider very important in my life and I care deeply for them. During my appointment, we conversed about many things while the needles were in. Eventually, we began to discuss the value of emotion in Healing; not only the emotions of the Healer, but of the recipient of the Healing as well.

Something about that conversation opened a part of me that I felt had to be discussed, and I mentioned how difficult it seems to be in our society to verbally express affection without being misunderstood. There are less than five women aside from my mother and partner to whom I can say “I love you” without fear that they will think I am being too bold or worse, trying to be sexually forward. And in North America, for a man to say that to another man would elicit great homophobic outcries, although there are a couple that I express these emotions to since they are amazingly good friends and understand that my words express my gratitude for their friendship.

My friend and I as Healers, -- she as an acupuncturist, a Reiki Practitioner, and other modalities I don’t remember, and I as a Reiki Master -- both know the value of Love when it comes to Healing. Many of the “New Age” (ancient wisdom) modalities are based on imbuing the client with a sense of being loved, unconditionally. It is this feeling of Love that gives the client a sense of well-being and inner Peace from which to allow the Healing to grow. So often that Love is not articulated verbally rather than implicitly sensed by the client, yet what is so wrong with saying it? All the great religions of the world teach Love and Compassion as the most important principles, and yet we are so reluctant to speak of love to any but the most intimate of our friends, and even in saying that I am reluctant to let it go to print because of the word “intimate.” Why would I be reluctant to use that word? Because I don’t want to give the impression of physical intimacy when the intimacy of which I speak is emotional.

I guess it boils down to language and how it’s used and what certain words have come to mean in our society. Again, I am not too hung up about telling my friends I love them, but only if they can take it in the way I mean it. If it would make them uncomfortable, it doesn’t get said...

Which is a shame.

~Still Wandering...

Extreme weather and Weekend reflections.

It is Sunday, September fifth, 2010 as I write this. At 7:30 in the evening, the sun has gone down low enough that it would now be dark in the forest, and long sleeves are going to be necessary when I venture outside. It is the first weekend of school season here in Nova Scotia.

As a boy, Sunday evening meant the Ed Sullivan show: I saw all my favourite musical acts there; The Beatles, the Dave Clark 5, The Hollies, The Doors, and Petula Clarke whose music still touches me in a way that no one else’s can.

As I grew older and became a teenager, I began playing music on the weekends. During the summer when there was no school, it was easy to overlook Sunday other than the fact that I had more money than my friends because of the weekend’s gigs, but as September came and school resumed, Sunday meant a restful turning point for me. It was the end of the combined activities of the week and weekend. Friday wasn’t really restful because after school I would have to prepare for the night’s performance. After we finished the gig, we’d often end up at an all night diner a few kilometres from home and stay there literally all night. Saturday there was always a basketball game or other activity at the school and I’d be there with all my friends, then perform again that night and again, spend the night at the diner. Sunday was either more activities at the school or jamming with friends other than the band. Sunday evening marked the end of the partying and activity.

After I finished high school, I worked at day jobs, again performing on the weekends, but even my non-musician friends among you will recognize the pattern: I play music; you listen to it or dance to it, but the continuation from week to weekend really seems uninterrupted and seamless.

Once I became a professional musician, we’d most often be booked in a venue for six consecutive nights before heading on to the next one. Sunday was travel day and upon checking into the hotel in the next town, Sunday night would once again be a time of rest for me.

I began to appreciate the pattern last year while living in Fredericton and working for Los Cabos drumsticks. The weekend was a time of doing the things that didn’t get done during the week; laundry, grocery shopping, and of course cycling and visiting friends and family members.

Yesterday, a tropical storm (what was left of Hurricane Earl) blew through the area, leaving us without power for over fifteen hours. As darkness fell, I sat on the couch, looking out my living room window at the frantic activities of the villagers. Cars left driveways and returned, flashlights bobbed as people walked, or ran, often no further than next door. It was as if everybody suddenly had more to do than normal. Eventually I began to resent all the lights interrupting the darkness. Once the clouds cleared, there were more stars than I have seen since my last wilderness camping trip many years ago. It was hot in the house and I was perfectly contented to sit and do nothing, hear nothing, see nothing.

With no electricity, there was no TV, no computer, no reading, no streetlights... No need... no urgency to do anything other than just BE!

Tonight, as I sit here in my “Zen Zone,” again, there is no TV, no music playing, hardly any lights on in the house. I appreciate these moments of silent inactivity in a life full of doing, in a world full of noise.

~Still Wandering...

Habitual Habituation (?)

It is said that it takes at least three weeks to establish a pattern in our lives and another three weeks for it to become habitual. I know from experience that it takes a great long time to break habits.

For many years, I smoked cigarettes. Occasionally, I would smoke a pipe because I loved the rich smell of the tobacco. (I still do) Several years ago, after an extended period of not smoking at all, I started smoking cigars, and became somewhat of a connoisseur.

During my teens, when I began smoking, I also began using (and eventually abusing) alcohol and non-prescription drugs. As a musician, I felt it was necessary as part of my “image” to fit the stereotype.

Over time, my habits became addictions, and the struggle to break free began.

Today, I have eliminated many of my addictive habits from my life, and can live quite well without them. I still love coffee and chocolate, but compared to some things I have ingested, those are pretty mild.

One habit I have tried to establish is a more active lifestyle in order to lose weight and lower my blood pressure as well as reduce the risk of heart disease, stroke and cancer. I have always enjoyed cycling and hiking, but this year I attempted to do more of each. I think the cycling has worked out relatively well, having logged nearly a thousand kilometres (over six hundred miles) on the Devinci. While that is far less than I had the opportunity to ride, it is still exponentially more than ever before in my adult life, and I still have at least another month and a half before the weather becomes prohibitive. I have lost about seven kilograms (fifteen pounds) and appear much trimmer. Again, I could have done better, but there were days when the heat and humidity would have made such activity more stupid than admirable.

As well, I have returned to playing my drums as a means of financial support and mental/Spiritual therapy. Drumming it seems, is always who I have been so to speak. But to go from a four year total hiatus to performing at least once a week, has placed demands on my body that surprised me. Even minimal effort now causes muscle fatigue and soreness. For that reason, I have taken time away from cycling to partake in some practice in order to rebuild my former strength and speed. I also carry fewer drums with me due to restricted vehicle space, so I’ve had to rethink my playing style. This too required actual physical practice to make sure my ideas could be executed onstage.

Some habits are formed from compulsion as well. Today, I got up, caffeinated my brain into some semblance of functioning activity, and then moved the coffee table, rolled out my mat and did Yoga for the first time in over a year. Now, I am sipping green tea that has steeped in a terracotta teapot that at one time used to seem glued to my hand.

The Yoga and tea are two things I hope to re-establish as habits in my life. I need twenty more days to establish the pattern, then another twenty one days to make it a habit.

Can I do it?

~Still Wandering…

The Power of Memory.

I’ve never been one to collect a lot of photographs. I tried; for a while in the early days of my musical career, I carried a huge SLR camera and several lenses on my travels across North America, but invariably, it sat in my hotel room while I was out walking or sightseeing. A number of years ago I went digital, but that camera too sits more often on my table than in my knapsack or bike’s trunk bag. Photography just doesn’t seem to be my way of gathering memories.

I have another way to collect my memories... I use rhythm, lyrics and melody; I use music!

I mentioned in a previous blog how music stirs great emotions and memories for me. In a recent conversation, the discussion turned to older songs and how they seemed to have more substance than today’s music. Titles began to emerge: Songs by Aerosmith, Deep Purple, Joe Cocker, (I’ve mentioned them all before) and I said, “Every song a memory.”

I’ve been blessed with what seems to be a remarkable capacity to remember. I can remember events that occurred when I was three years old. Since that conversation, I’ve been remembering songs, occurrences associated with them, people, places... everything! I’ve just reached my mid-fifties, and I have many memories. Memories of boyhood adventures with my friends, memories of drives in the country with my Dad, memories of learning to play music and the early days of performing in school and then dance halls, memories of romance and heartbreak. Already I have so many memories and yet I have the capacity for so many more.

I think often of my parents and grandparents, aunts and uncles, older cousins and others I have known who are older than I. What memories they must have. As a young man in my early twenties, I asked my grandfather about the changes he must have experienced growing up, being born in the latter days of the nineteenth century and passing away in the eighty-third year of his life. He had been born when transportation was by horse, light had been by oil lamps and candles and heat had been produced by wood and coal, and had witnessed the introduction of telephones, automobiles, and electricity. He said the changes didn’t seem too big a deal because they had come gradually. At first, someone in the community had a car; someone else had a telephone etc. Eventually more and more people had all the amenities and so it grew from there. And yet, looking back on his life, he lived to see not only aeroplanes fly, but the lunar landing in 1969, and he watched it on a colour TV!

I think of my mother, now approaching her late eighties, and the life she has lived. She too grew up with horses in the barn although she was very aware of cars and wasn’t too old when her father got one. Yet she lived through the great depression, WW II, the Korean war, and outlived two husbands. Last year she left the house she and Dad built and I can only imagine the pain she must have felt as each memory was packed away to be moved to another location or sold at a yard sale. I share her regret that Dad hadn’t lived to see her retirement from her job and the many other magical moments in her life including her grandchildren, my niece and nephew. Her life has not been an easy one and yet I know she has loved it and has few regrets.

Mom’s siblings, all but two, are now all gone as is my father and his siblings. I never met either of my grandmothers and my maternal grandfather died when I was very young, yet I can still taste the candies he slipped to me when Mom’s back was turned.
I also remember more recently the many wonderful people I met through my Taiji and Reiki experiences and even more recently Velo Cape Breton. I have made some terrific friends, made wonderful memories, and expect to make many more.

Who are you making your memories with? Are they the lasting kind, or are they fleeting? Will you look back in forty years with fondness on these days or with disdain?

My hope for you is that your life be long, your days be fair, and your memories plentiful and joyous.