middle-age chronicles

Whodda thunk that a simple trip and fall could cause so much pain? It's no surprise that the end of youth brings a loss of resilience and longer recovery times post-workout/physical activity. When you're young, you take a dive and hit the deck and your chums lose their shit and laugh at you and post the video on YouTube, but you get up and dust yourself off. If you see middle-aged people or god forbid elderly go over, there may be a better chance there's significant pain involved. I think maybe the older you get, loss of equilibrium becomes more dire for whatever reason.

Well, I guess it depends on the situation. Before this instance, it wasn't that long ago that I went over like a lead dirigible out in public for no reason and it's true I was in serious pain, but mostly to my pride. I got up quick and dusted my embarrassment off, was thankful no Google Maps car was passing by and continued on my way pretending nothing happened. 

This time I fell walking UP the stairs to my apartment so gravity was even in my favor. I didn't fall as far as that time in public. It was just a stumble that slow motion would reveal how it progressively got worse in microseconds. Multiple impact points, the most obvious and immediate was my right knee that I thought took the brunt of it. My left foot jammed against a step, both palms hit the landing trying to break the fall with my backpack getting tossed over my shoulder. The top side of my left ankle was the only place where a little bit of blood was drawn so that hit something, too. 

But the PAIN. When the fall was over after a second or so, I was shocked, stunned by the full-body pain and had to pause because I couldn't move because of it washing over in waves (mind you, I still had the presence of mind/YouTube awareness to look up and around the stairwell to confirm there was no camera in sight). Not wanting to be seen like this if a neighbor happened to be leaving or coming home just then, I pried myself up and proceeded limping to my room and tended to the knee which looked like there was a major contusion but just turned out to be some dirt and took an Advil for the pain. In short order I determined the fall was nothing and dwelling any more upon it would be symptomatic of chronic hypochondria.

The next part I don't understand. Two full days later (of normal activity) the pain in my left big toe which had jammed against the step in the fall bloömed. The pain and the swelling probably indicating a fracture. If it is a fracture, why would it take two days for the effect to manifest? Psychological? The pain is incredible (befitting a fracture), but why didn't it hurt like this right away? 

I took Advil, first one pill and then two, but the pain didn't go away and if it wasn't going to work I decided to not waste it and not take anymore. Then the next day without Advil the pain was ridiculous, just moving my foot or changing position was excruciating. I tried the Advil again and found that it was working just fine, it's just that the pain was so intense that ibuprofen could only dial it down, not eradicate it. It still hurt, I was still limping on it, but at least I could manage moving around. That was a huge relief. 

With the big toe swollen like a mini sausage, I couldn't wear sneakers for a few days. The first time I tried, I took one step and immediately switched to Birkenstocks. No brainer. Fortunately Taiwan isn't as fashion-forward as the U.S. and there's no career/social life-ending taboo against wearing socks with sandals. Even if I weren't already wearing socks when I switched footwear, I'd rather not have Birkenstock shaped tan lines on my feet. If my fellow Americans are fine with those tan lines, well that's an idiotic look, too, btw. Me, I don't care what anyone thinks about the way I look wearing sandals with socks, but Birkenstock tan lines I'm the one who has to look at and one annoying summer to autumn to winter until they finally faded was enough.

I gotta admit it's annoying and frustrating having to deal with this physical pain at a time when I would prefer to just cruise unperturbed towards the purported end of this life path. It's more annoying than the two incidences of knee pain in the past few months because I don't know what caused that, whereas this was my own unmindful, clumsy undoing. But actually it's a good reminder of how fragile this physical body is and that it's pretty much downhill from here. Actually this is a great reminder of the nature of the body and I should be treating it as part of my path. 

In fact, there have been several things popping up in my daily life recently that I would do well to consider challenges on my path. Not on my path, but as my path. I should consider these as final tests of learning the universe is throwing at me, and taking that view I'm not doing so great; could really be doing better. Maybe not tests because then I'd be failing. More like reviews of what I should have learned and mastered and should continue to try and drive home.

Like little money things. The irony is so rich that I'm finally running out of money and all of a sudden (really!) I'm losing little bits of money right and left on random, trivial things. It's not about amounts (negligible), and the specifics are so random and petty as to be absurd and even embarrassing to mention. But the fact that they're happening and I'm noticing and getting a little bit wtf? annoyed instead of laughing at the big joke means I should probably be paying more attention to something! Come to think of it, the amounts are mostly in the range of what I should be willing to give to panhandlers. And there aren't many panhandlers in Taipei, but I came across one about a month ago and thought about it but ultimately failed to lighten myself of coinage. I don't know if that's it, but why not? That's the path for you.

Other things I've noticed popping up for improvement include being unpleasant or feeling like I'm being unpleasant to random people (lack of compassion); having at least one moment every day that puts me in a bad mood (bad attitude); not being able to smile just because I'm here and breathing without feeling sarcastic. It keeps turning into a smirk or a sneer whenever I try (negativity). If the aim is to be joyful at the end, it's much more convincing if I can learn to be joyful leading up to the end.

looming

I exchanged the last of my U.S. cash for NT dollars late last month, so I'm officially looking at the end of funds, i.e., the supposed end of my life. I suppose I should put a disclaimer here (or trigger warning? spoiler alert?) that this all is only a reflection of current thoughts and not necessarily a projection of future action. My primary truism regarding suicide still applies that if I'm not doing something right now, it's fair considered I'm not doing anything at all. And I'm not doing anything right now, I'm blogging.

I have about three month's worth of funds left with no more "buffer" (that was the last of the U.S. cash) and no intention or desire to do anything about it. I know I've blogged this many times before, projecting how long I have left in terms of funds running out, and all of those times funds have come through, all those times I still had that buffer of U.S. cash. I don't know what I was thinking when I wrote about it before, was I being dramatic? Crying wolf? Maybe I was testing myself, practicing what it might feel like to face the end of funds? 

That last one sounds like something my subconscious would do, and if that's the case I think the practice paid off. All those times before I don't think I did so well. I'd feel anxious and desperate despite how disparate that was to my philosophy; basically getting caught up in the emotions of particular circumstances – exactly what mindfulness practice trains not to do. Now, this time, it's supposedly fer reals, it's serial; no buffer, no reserve, no reprieve, no miracles, no savior, no windfall, no stuffed mattress, no cartoon safe filled with NT cash falling through my ceiling. The cash will be gone in a few months, and when the cash is gone, the cash is gone. That means no mo' money. Great! Faboo, that was the plan. No point to those previous reactions, better to just prepare.

This is a big deal. It's nothing to be dramatic about, but I also don't want to downplay that it's a major marker signaling the end of my current life path. John's blog was mostly about his experience with terminal cancer and dealing and doing his best to live with it, but then he reached that point, that marker in the last month that signaled it was over (even though it might not have been so clear to him at the time) and there was no more treating or dealing with the cancer, no more fighting it. It just became about the non-stop, excruciating pain and managing it with military-grade the best big pharma painkillers until the end. For me, no matter what mind games I played with myself, no matter what neurotic dysfunction or flaky waffling I wallowed in, the end of funds, running out of money was always, always, always endgame. 

That was the plan. No matter what paltry, lame excuses I made to live on, no matter how many times I tried and chickened out, the plan was to constantly make life decisions that would funnel me to the point where I would reach the end of my funds and there would be no surviving the decision of suicide at that point. Ironically, it was my parents who foiled the plan for so long by providing base funds (which they thought were supplemental to my income because in their minds they simply couldn't conceive of me being unemployed as I have been for the past decade) that kept me not only alive, but reasonably, relatively comfortable. 

Chronic suicidal ideation is survivable in a similar way that bipolar, schizophrenia, PTSD, etc. are survivable. Those, of course, aren't death sentences per se, whereas if suicidal ideation becomes acute, survivability goes down because that's its nature. But if it remains chronic that means there are still mental mechanisms leaning towards living embedded in the consideration and contemplation of suicide and living with it becomes possible. 

I did and was all that but then I added a "fail-safe" (or its opposite, "success-danger"?), a few extra lines of code in the software of mental mechanisms that guaranteed that someday I would succeed in committing suicide instead of just living and getting by with the suicidal ideation. I basically sabotaged chronic suicidal ideation so that it wasn't survivable. The plan was that I set up the conditions so that I would have to commit suicide (by agreement with myself) when I had no more support (money) for living. And I'd never be desperate or motivated enough to make the money myself to survive. I learned about myself that no matter what job I landed or stability or satisfaction I found, it wouldn't last. I'd get bored, I'd sabotage it, I'd come around back to suicidal ideation and nothing anyone has done or said or been to me has changed that.

Little of this is actually new aside from hitting that marker of exhausting my buffer of U.S. cash. The "chronic suicidal ideation" concept is still a relatively new revelation that I'm not through mulling, but all of the suicide stuff otherwise is not. So I think it fair to quickly fill in the rest of the suicide philosophy that I prefer to approach it positively without despondency and recognizing that all things are impermanent anyway. I choose to view it positively as part of my path and that there is something to learn from it. Better that than be all negative about it, right? 

It also helps having a system of belief that includes reincarnation and doesn't put that much ultimate importance on any single bodily lifetime. Each lifetime is important, but for me the importance is measured in what's learned and spiritual progress made. Dying is not an ultimate end. I agree with the belief it's just the end of a body and not the end of a "person" or the energy or the path/journey it's on. How we die and the mindset we're in when we die is key to future manifestations and not human morality or judgment (except to the effect that they affect our mindset). 

If a "trigger warning" was warranted, I hope it's more to trigger living mindfully. If you're suicidal and don't believe in reincarnation, don't be an ass and just don't do it, throwing away your shot. Whoops, there goes the trigger warning.

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Several years ago I wondered whether or not I really did have a teacher, a "guru", somewhere out there that I wasn't pursuing in this lifetime as a matter of personal (possibly karmic) choice. So I did what any diligent and hardcore committed practitioner would do and started sending out mental signals to the universe asking whether or not I really did have a teacher, a "guru", somewhere out there for when I was ready to have a teacher again in some future lifetime. 

I didn't really expect any kind of sign or "response", skepticism prevailing, but just a little while later, I think maybe within the month, I got an email from an old college acquaintance I hadn't heard from in years saying she had a flash of intuition that she "needed" to contact me and tell me about her teacher; the Zen teacher she's found in this lifetime (I had no idea that she ended up on the Zen path).

I interpreted that as a response from the universe. Not necessarily that her teacher was my teacher (maybe so, but I still wasn't ready to pursue it), but that's how it would happen. When I was ready for a teacher again, it would just come my way by happenstance. Don't worry about it, it'll happen when I'm ready in a future lifetime (with chronic suicidal ideation the "future" is never in this lifetime). I haven't thought about it since. 

Not having thought about it since, I never gave thought about what type of teacher or what characteristics I would look for in a teacher, what criteria would make me accept a teacher. I guess I just thought it would come down to instinct and I think that was right, the best approach for me.

On February 5, I watched a video that showed up on my YouTube front page by a guru named Sadhguru. I know that was the date because I posted it on Facebook to mark the date I first came across his videos. It was just instinct, something about him, that I thought I should mark the occasion. I still don't know why he stood out that I should click on his video, I generally don't click on any guru-looking video that shows up on my page. 

I've watched a bunch, dozens, of his videos since then (many are in the quickly watchable 10-20 minute range). I don't agree with everything he says, but what's the point of a teacher if you agree with everything he or she says? Might as well be your own guru then (maybe my biggest problem has been that I've been acting like my own guru then). But it's not like I disagree with anything he says, at worst I'm skeptical but still open. Or I just don't know. 

Just about all of his videos, posted and re-posted across various sites (watch one video and recommendations abound thereafter), make me ponder something specific. That's unlike other dharma talks that I'll sometimes listen to just to have the words enter my ears and paying attention is optional. However, the titles indicate such a range of issues that some I'm just not interested in. He covers Buddhism and Gautama just as a small part of larger Hindu spiritual cosmology, perhaps befitting someone truly enlightened and therefore possibly unlimited in range. Nothing he says contradicts anything in Tibetan Buddhism and Tibetan iconography even affirms the wider view as represented in Hinduism. The Buddha, Gautama, is represented as the sage of the human realm. 

One thing I like about him are his "twists" on some points. Sort of like plot twists in movies when you realize something you thought was one thing turns out to be something else. And he makes things on the spiritual path seem so simple! And that feeling carries away from his talks, stop making things so complicated, it's really quite simple! Things he says are confounding but in a good way; enlightening in a way of feeling lighter after listening to him. 

When Luyen (pronounced "Lynn", should rhyme with Nguyen) contacted me several years ago, the universe may have been showing me how it would happen when I was ready for a teacher again. I don't think it matters that in a future lifetime I wouldn't recall any particular incidents from this lifetime. I think that's the sort of thing that can carry over as karmic seeds and germinate either as instinct or in response to encouraging conditions or stimuli (I certainly don't know how much of my instinct or experience in this lifetime is the result of karmic seeds from things that occurred in past lifetimes, i.e., to someone else). And coming across Sadhguru so close to what is looking more and more to be the end of my life may be the universe giving me confidence in recognizing a qualified and worthy teacher. 

I even came across a video covering people like me with a dubious relationship with the guru concept and sums up a lot of what I've been struggling with (and like chronic suicidal ideation I'm neither alone nor unique):

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