📿 In or Between Crises

Some thoughts on emergencies, from an emergency room

Hello you— Adreanna here with this week’s dispatch of The Laundry.

The past few weeks in our house have been pock marked with crises of varying severity. Just as a sampling: we had a little car smash up in the driveway. A handful of power outages. A medical scare for Ruby. And ants built a colony inside our shower door. Imagine thousands of ants, spilling into the tub when we turned on the water, like the promo for a low budget horror film. 

This week, our puppy, June, ate glass. I’ll just cut to the reassurance that yes — she is going to be fine. Though for a few days, this wasn’t a guarantee. This is a difficult place to live in, psychically; the place where something is not a guarantee. Especially when that which is not guaranteed is a critical source of income, or the endurance of a relationship, or the life of a being that you love.

When I’ve been able to live in this place successfully (which is to say- with some stability of mind and softness of heart), I’m able to take the uncertainty of the situation frame by frame, as more information comes into view rather than jumping to conclusions or pushing some anxiety based agenda of what needs to happen next. This is not always the case. Keeping my wits about me in uncertainty is a practice. 

I found my glass nail file on the floor in the morning snapped into pieces with a fairly large section missing. I feel queasy that I left the file in June’s reach, though I honestly would never have predicted that this would be something she’d chew. I can’t imagine that she liked the taste of it. Maybe she enjoyed the crunch that it made as it split between her teeth? I fed her a bag of puffy hotdog buns to pad the sharp edges in her intestines, and sifted through her poo like a California panner sifting muddy rivers for gold. After finding a shard half the size of a penny, we took a trip to the emergency room. 

Anytime I’m in an emergency room, I think of Pema Chödrön. In her classic When Things Fall Apart, (AKA: when that which is not guaranteed falls through) she parallels emergency rooms to the charnel grounds in Tibet. These are the frozen burial grounds where the historical Buddha was said to have sent monks who were “advanced” practitioners to meditate, amongst the gore of human remains. Because the ground is frozen there, all of the gore is on display. Emergency rooms, too, are a place where the gore of the human experience is on display. There is no hiding from vulnerability and the fundamental instability of life in a place of emergency. 

June and I were triaged to the sitting area while we waited for a nurse to check her vitals. I watched the automatic entry doors slide open to reveal pets and their people, in varying states of distress. A man with a large dog crumpled in his arms lumbered towards the check in counter. The dog’s name was Lucky, and a medic wrapped her in a towel and jogged her towards the medical rooms. I pretended not to notice as the man wiped his eyes vigorously with the back of his hands. I gave comforting strokes to the top of June’s head and practiced Metta, some version of Metta, which was more like begging the ether that June and Lucky and the man wiping his eyes and all the distressed beings in this building be safe. Or - in staying true to the essence of Metta - that all of us feel at home in our bodies and at ease in the fundamental uncertainty. Even (and especially) when the moment makes clear that safety isn’t a guarantee. 

Lama Marut was one of the first Buddhist meditation teachers I took classes with in New York. He once addressed the room by stating factually that we are always either in a crisis or in between crises and cautioned us not to fool ourselves that life was any other way. I remember thinking that this was a crummy way to live. How rotten it must be to walk around with a lens of the world that a crisis is around the corner. How pessimistic. How paranoid. How anxiety inducing. No thank you, very much. Like any Buddhist teaching, the instruction is not to agree, not to buy in wholesale, but to test the theory against experience. Eighteen years later I can say, from my own experience, that Lama Marut seems to be right. 

Crisis is adapted from the Greek word krisis which simply means decision.  In the same way, emergency is derived from the Latin emergere, which means to arise, to bring to light. In an emergency, something arises - often unexpectedly. A crisis is a turning point at which a decision needs to be made. 

Perhaps what is brought to light in an emergency is the instability, the uncertainty, the vulnerability of life that always undergirds our experience no matter how many buffers or nets we build. Or in the words of Pema Chödrön, perhaps what an emergency brings to light is that “things… come together and they fall apart. Then they come together again and fall apart again. It’s just like that. The healing comes from letting there be room for all of this to happen: room for grief, for relief, for misery, for joy.”

There’s often a moment when I’m on retreat when I’ll gaze around the room at the participants, steady and contained, and think — if an outbreak of the zombie apocalypse happens today, I’m in the perfect place. These are definitely the people I want to be with if theres a major emergency. I know from my own practice that mediation makes people more sturdy, clear headed, responsive and alert — which decades of research seems to support. Problem solving, emotional regulation, focus, decision making; the brain changes under the influence of mindfulness meditation in a way that makes us more adept at handling emergencies, navigating crisis. By doing the unsexy work of coming back to our senses over and over and over again, we’re training ourselves to stay and soften into whatever the moment is serving us. Whether that be the loss of electricity, a bathtub full of ants, or a loved one with glass in their belly. 

I’ve been considering Lama Marut’s statement that living means that we’re either in a crisis or between crises. Crises both big and small. If I had to write in the margins of this advice, especially to my younger self, I would note that the trick here is not to look for evidence that a crisis is on it’s way. Expecting crisis around the corner and seeking evidence of it’s arrival is absolutely maddening. Paranoid. A crummy way to live. Accepting crisis as a rhythm in life, however, is actually pretty sane. I’ve also found that looking for proof of how things are falling apart causes me to miss how things are things are simultaneously coming together, which can sometimes offer solace, hope, interest, beauty.

In the margins: Crises will come. Don’t seek them out, or invent them. Let there be room for response when they happen. Also, meditation helps. 

A nurse opened up a room for June and gently felt around her stomach. She affirmed that we were doing everything that we could do, and the only other thing to do now was wait. Glass, apparently, will usually pass on it’s own after a few days. Which means a few days of sitting in uncertainty. Feed her more puffy hotdog buns, maybe some canned pumpkin. Monitor her behavior. Sift through her poo like a California gold panner. Keep our wits about us. That’s the only thing to do.

We were sent home to monitor the emergency: just watch what new information arises, notice what’s brought to light. The answer, thankfully, is nothing. Except maybe a puppy with lots of energy who is eating and drinking and playing just fine. Which is a relief, because for a few days, that wasn’t the guaranteed outcome. But then again — what outcome is guaranteed? 

(The easy, uncomplicated love from a dog. That’s what.)

PS:: Registration for our annual mediation retreat in the Hudson Valley is now live. There’s a wonderful group that’s coming together and we’d love to have you join us for a weekend of meditation, talks, and community.

You can find all of the information HERE.