A Canadian goose walked to the edge of the river, then stood sentinel beside a tree. It had rained during the night and everything was wet, but there was a break in the sky, and though it was still grey, it was lighter, allowing for more sun to permeate the high clouds. I pulled into a little hidden park off the main road and checked my phone. I was due to video-conference with my therapist in a few minutes – we were trying out the new Telehealth options during the COVID crisis, and this was to be our first video call. Technological advances being what they are, and everyone also being on the same plan at this busy time of the morning, the call did not go through, so we ended up doing it the old-fashioned way over the phone without video. Getting over my trepidation over video calls would have to wait another week. I watched the goose approach the river and studied the vivid green of a patch of grass that led to a single picnic table. Our session began, and in the privacy of the Mini Cooper I settled in to a closer examination of the past.
It’s been over six months since I’ve been going to therapy regularly, and for the first time since I started I took a look back at the road behind me, not realizing how far I had come. Not that I’m anywhere near where I need or want to be just yet ~ this is not a finish lap by any means~ but I’m at a completely different place than I was back in the late fall of last year. A global pandemic can re-order priorities I suppose, and when internal changes and shifts in the very bedrock of one’s existence are also at work, it’s impossible not to be swept up in some very dynamic and dramatic differences – some sort of plate tectonics, if I recall the earth-altering theory correctly from 8th grade Earth Science.
How to navigate such swells in the tumultuous waters where we now find ourselves? I can’t quite explain it, other than to analyze the facts of the past few months, and find there some collection of clues that give reason to why I haven’t completely lost my shit. Quite the contrary, I feel more at peace and present than I have in a very long time. This I can only attribute to my therapy, a few books I’ve read, an online class in ‘The Science of Well-Being’, and daily meditation and mindfulness. The latter has been a constant and consistent part of my day since the early part of the year. Its calm and resulting joy didn’t happen overnight, and the more I meditate, the more the world seems to be falling apart – or maybe it’s the other way around. Whatever the case, meditation has been one of the main things keeping me grounded and moored when for almost 44 years I would have otherwise lost my mind from all that’s been happening. While other people seem to be consumed by anger and frustration and the realigning of what we considered normal, I’ve been able to process and accept things without as much emotional damage as I once might have suffered.
Ahead of me, a tree bloomed with white flowers. They were there before most of the foliage was out, something the redbud and the American dogwood and many cherry trees have in common – these flowers that appear before the main leaves, blooming without the background and support that most flowering plants have, but blooming nonetheless, even after the coldest winters, they are there, putting on their show, valiantly performing in the midst of late-season frosts and snowfalls.
A large rock fronted with a plaque stood near my car, with the name of the park and a dedication on it. I was more interested in what was behind the rock, on its river side, where a pattern of lichens blossomed like flowers themselves in shades of grayish green and bright, bold chartreuse. Nature knows how to combine her colors and how best to show each of them off. Lichens, unlike most flowers, could easily withstand a full-blown, devastating snowstorm, no matter what time of year. Strength, resilience, and beauty.
As my therapy session went on that morning, I recalled moments of shame from my childhood, touchstone turning points where the trajectory and course of my life was being determined, and I was too little, too young to know how I was taking each hurt and heartbreak into the formation of my soul, and when I was finally old enough to understand I had already buried those things deep down in some inaccessible place to protect myself. It was the best I could do. It wasn’t the best thing to have done, but it was the best I could do. It was the best we all could do.
Would I have discovered this without therapy? Perhaps, with a great deal of effort and time. Would I have been able to process such things without meditation? Perhaps, with a great deal of patience and self-discipline. But why make it more difficult than it has already been? I find therapy to be of great help, to help speed up processing and understanding, and to get a view into my mind that 44 years of living has sometimes worked only to obscure and hide. I find similar benefit in meditation and mindfulness to calm the mind, because I live and work and do my best when my mind is at a state of unrushed calm and quiet. Meditation has broadened that state for me, extending the ability to stay focused and steady the more I do it. The best thing about all this? I’ve only just begun – and the path ahead can be whatever I make of it. My plan is to slowly and gradually expand the meditation, and focus on bringing it into as many moments as possible. The ultimate goal is to make the peace and serenity I feel at the end of a meditation part of daily living. I’m getting there…
When it’s time to finish the session, I put the phone down and let out a deep breath. It was the closest I had come to crying during therapy, and it felt good. I got out of the car and walked to the edge of the river. I saw the goose there. We both looked down over the water; only one of us looked down over the past, and then he made a vow to let it go.
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