Today is a day when feeling thankful is in the air and on the airways. Of course, we would be wise to treat every day as an occasion for appreciation. But many of us, if we’re honest, notice themes of discontent nudging to the front of the line, like the movie goers I noticed getting ahead of me in the snack line, their shoulders at first behind mine, then slipping in front, then stepping into a small space in front of me–so that I missed the previews when I finally found a seat in the theater with my tub of buttered popcorn.
But today is not a day when I want to nurse old memories of being passed over, being wounded in heart and mind, or angry that our world doesn’t provide fairly for all. Today I wish to remember all the blessings and gifts I have received.
At the foundation of my life, I am very fortunate to have family and friends who care for me and who teach me every day that I too can be happy when I care for them. Our world is mired in homelessness, desperation, and sinkholes of suffering. But somehow, I have been exempted, for no reason of entitlement that I can claim. Even losing family and friends has grounded me more deeply in a balanced acceptance of the truth of life.
Today, I have an event in mind that happened last week. I had just dropped my Kia Soul off to get some work done and was waiting for my wife to pick me up. It was a rainy day and I decided to wait inside the dealership showroom and keep a look out for her vehicle to pull into the lot. As soon as I stepped onto the black faut marble floor, both my feet flew out behind me like greased pigs on a schoolyard slide.
I should give a bit of background before describing what happened next. I have fallen before, sometimes ending up in a cast for months, while a series of X-rays pronounced that I needed another eight weeks before I could get back to life as usual. Once, when I tripped over a change in level between sidewalk slabs and toppled like a tree trunk straight forward, my arms managed to keep my nose an inch above the concrete slab and I didn’t even break my wrists. I have been taking fosamax, a bone strengthener, for the past year; because both my doctor and I are concerned about my next fall.
Last week after I fell, I was able to get up without a break, without a bruise, and amazingly, without feeling the slightest discomfort or strained muscle, either immediately or since. I simply stepped into the showroom and a moment later was lying face down on the polished floor with a salesman asking if I was OK.
This is my speculation. Coming in from tramping through rain-puddles outside, and stepping confidently onto the polished surface on which there was not the slightest imperfection for my worn rubber soles to grip, I was momentarily hovering above the film of rain water I had carried inside. Remembering some of the sensations of the next moments and extrapolating, this is what may then have occurred.
Instead of toppling forward with my feet still adhering to a sidewalk, my center of gravity unable to recover and the length of my body helplessly toppling down to earth; my feet both slipped free from their connection to the planet so suddenly and so completely that I was in the air above the showroom floor–not toppling but sailing slowly forward like a hang glider about to land. I speculate that my body would have coiled inwards like a threatened snake, my knees and hips folding, my arms reaching down toward the ground, until the dry tops of my feet made first contact with the floor, like a hovering craft landing in a controlled descent. Then, instead of a tree crashing onto the forest floor, my body folded into sections like a tent pole—tops of feet, knees, palms of hands, in succession touching down onto the ground–the forward momentum with which I had stepped inside unfurling like a spinnaker; and I was sailing across the shining floor; or to the onlooker who helped me stand up, lying spread eagled on the ground.
So now I have one more thing for which I am thankful. I add it to the forward momentum of a life that transforms what arrives as a cry of pain into signals of greeting in this medley of presence and absence that we honor and forget, in this heart-song of life that I don’t appreciate often enough.
“. . . all it requires is a shift in emphasis from getting things to cultivating the beauty of our juncture, our unique moment in time.” Keys of Knowledge, by Tarthang Tulku.
I hope you have recovered from this latest slip! It is of course some concern – we are not meant to be flying through the air, or even experiencing a slight bump in our travels. Wishing you a full recovery!