Those familiar with me would scarcely describe me as static. But when an I broke my ankle last August, it sentenced me to 6 weeks of surgery and hospital immobilization. That’s when I realized I had taken showers and running for granted. Even grocery shopping or carrying my laptop across the living room became an adventure with collateral damage.
I would have given everything to sweat in a good run outside. These thoughts came in circles – eat, realize I’m immobilized, sleep, repeat. But craving for something I couldn’t have was like fighting against the current of a river. Buddhism teaches us that this is the root cause of suffering.
I was lying on the hospital bed with 40 degrees of post-surgery fever. I was fighting the pain and wishing for prompt recovery. I closed my eyes and listened to Pink Floyd. I let myself be carried by the music and flow. Forst the first time, I stopped groping for stones in the river, and I let go of all desire to change my situation. I completely surrendered to the pain and even welcomed it as the next experience.
This acceptance didn’t come naturally before, and music helped. It required me to shift my gaze away from a promised future at the horizon. It meant working with what I have, without thinking about the drawbacks. It meant living in — rather than enduring through — my condition as if it was the only reality I ever knew.
But that allowed everything to change. “It’s beautiful outside, but I’m immobilized” became: “I’m immobilized, but it’s beautiful outside”. I set loose the energy that I wasted in trying to change my condition. I became creative and started writing this blog post. I started working much harder on what I could control, which was my startup, and money started coming in. Eventually, the pain faded away, too.
This profound yet challenging shift in perspective can be transformative at various levels of our lives. Imagine life as a boat on a river. Often, we fixate on what we lack, paddling relentlessly towards it in straight lines. Instead, try a complete stop of paddles and surrendering to that flow, which is the Yin. The direction and paddling is the Yang, and it should be picked up only once Yin is mastered. When either one takes over completely, cycle back to the other. Then, both are in equilibrium.
EDIT 2023: Little did I know , but the creative work in that hospital set off changes in my startup business model that led to a life changing sale 2 years later.
No habia leido este post y sabes que si resulta aplicable en muchísimas situaciones, es disfrutar la circunstancia por la que estemos atravesando y aprender que lo trae. Finalmente ninguna circunstancia es para siempre.