Category Archives: Social Science

The Universal Story

Nacho, who writes Woodmoor Village Zendo, posted a quote by Cheri Huber.

One thing I like about practicing with a group is that we begin to see how impersonal it all is — all our melodramas that can seem so terribly personal. If we spent six months together, we all would know each other’s life stories, and it would be the same story. One person lives in Toledo, another one lives in Shanghai, but it is the same story. Being a human being is pretty much the same for all of us; the differences are far, far less than the similarities. What we think, what we fear, how our emotions arise – fundamentally, we are very much alike. We get caught up in differences in content because that is how we experience ourselves as separate.

Working in a group enables us to see not only how we are all attached to the same things, but how, when we are attached, we suffer, and how, when we come back to the present moment, we cease to suffer. It’s that straightforward.

As we see the sameness of our experience, our suffering becomes less charged: our story is one more story among countless stories. It becomes easier to find the courage to bring our attention back to the present, to allow whatever happens simply to happen.

–Cheri Huber

How relevant this is to me right now! Last night I volunteered at an adult education program with English language learners. My task was to be a conversation partner (actually, a listener) to give them a chance to practice speaking. I conversed with four people and was amazed at some of the similarities among them, and between me and them. Two women came to the U.S. for their husbands’ jobs. They are not permitted to work here, regardless of their professional training (and both had careers in their home countries). I, too, have been displaced from my profession since moving here, and I miss it. I was fascinated as I listened to them describe their daily lives, their comparisons of culture, and what they enjoy and dislike about being here, in the states, now.

Another student illustrated the universality of the heart’s anguish that arises when we move far from home. She is 19 and has lived here three months. Her aunt worked hard for five years and invested no small sum to arrange the paperwork that permitted entrance. She started training in her home country as a nurse, but she came to finish it here. There are better opportunities here for her, if she chooses to stay, and an American education will also open doors back in her home country. She is providing day care and earning a larger salary than she ever did in her home country, and will use her earnings to pay for college here. Yet she struggles with the decision whether to stay. We talked about the advantages of each choice, and when I asked her what pulled at her to return home, she said: “I miss my mother and father.” Oh, yes. Our stories are the same. I shared a little about my recent trip and how hard it is to say good-bye to some things and hello to others. So perhaps she will feel less alone, as I do, knowing that people encounter this everywhere, every day. Whatever her decision, I hope talking about it helped her.

This morning I received an email from a friend arranging a coffee date and learned that a job opportunity she was excited about fell through. We’re in the same position of trying to find our way, following our talent and dreams, and coping with inconstancy. Later I talked with a city library employee to learn more about how I might get a job there. She provided information on this and much more, as well as encouragement. My burden is eased a bit. I am participating in a the same dance as every other human.

Having My Cake and Eating It Too Is Not Possible

This morning as I volunteered at the city library, the foundation director observed that I seem unsettled and expressed concern that I might be bored. This led to a conversation about work, the lack thereof in my life, and stress. He majored in psychology as I did, and when I mentioned the Holmes Rahe Stress Test he knew exactly what I meant. The test is used to determine disease susceptibility.

In the past year I’ve experienced a change in jobs three times; a cross-country move; change in frequency of seeing family and friends; the illness and death of my father-in-law; a rupture in our relations with my husband’s brother and wife; the sale of a house; the advent of repaying a student loan as large as a mortgage; a pregnancy and miscarriage — and I got married. A score indicating high stress is 250 or more. Scores above 300 suggest an 80% chance of serious illness in the next two years. My score was 510. No wonder I’m exhausted. I have moments of pleasure and contentment and am grateful for them. I don’t want to be this weary and flat. It simply is what it is.

The challenge with moving away from one’s roots and one’s parents is it requires a sacrifice of continuity. My visit home was wonderful. It was also revealing. I was privy to family documents I’d never seen before that told me about family members I’d yearned to know.

And yet.

A one-week visit is an intense face-to-face encounter with people. My brain couldn’t absorb it all. And of course loved ones in close quarters sometimes rub each others’ edges a bit; living close by would ease that and still allow for contact. Travel is exhausting, too, especially across several time zones. Being company and having company disrupts each person’s routines; while this isn’t fatal, the interruption evokes some level of stress.

(I’m doing a crappy job writing about this. I feel myself disconnecting. Time to plunge in.)

My parents are in their seventies. They are old and tired. Their bodies are wearing out; their energy is diminished. I visited for seven days, and I didn’t listen to every tidbit my mother shared. I couldn’t soak up all the details from my father’s binders filled with family lore. There’s a limit to my curiosity about my forebears, people whom my mother knew in the flesh, but now I wish I’d asked more questions. It’s not that I care so much about what my great-grandparent/aunt/cousin did or said; it’s that these relationships were real to my mother and they shaped her. I can’t know them. But don’t I want to know my mother? Why don’t I listen with more care and inquisitiveness?

I confess, I experienced moments of irritation with them (which I hope I hid effectively most times) during my visit. Then (too soon, and yet not too soon because I crave normalcy) it was time to leave. I hugged my mother and felt the frailty beneath her tissue-paper flesh. I realized that this could be the last time I experience her corporeally, because no one lives forever. Such has always been the case, but in the last ten years I’d been able to cram awareness into a dark corner. Now I’m older, they’re older, and I’m so much more aware of life’s brevity — of the irrevocability of death — since my father-in-law died. And I could not get enough of them, these people who gave me life. I sat and wept before I went through airport security. Since then, tears press against my eyes. I live on the verge of crying every day. For all I know, they may live many more years, and I hope they do. But the problem is I know nothing. It is impossible to know.

If I lived nearby, I could stop in for briefer visits over tea, a meal, or for an overnight. We could take in a movie and go to the farmer’s market. There wouldn’t be the intensity that a one-week visit creates by virtue of its beginning and ending. I wouldn’t feel compelled to store up sensations and images in case this is the last infusion of them. (And they are poor replicas of the real experience — they can’t be otherwise.) I wouldn’t be so aware of the fact that it might be another 18 months before I get to see them again, and if they die before then, all I will have are the memories and ghost sensations of my last visit — that then there will be no more. Being physically nearby would ease this, I tell myself. Perhaps this too is delusion. But it wouldn’t feel as urgent, as though so much were riding on one encounter.

And yet I moved far, far away. I needed to, in order to create my life and pursue my dreams. It is a good life, and I would make the same choices again. When I get into the rhythm of my life, the inevitability of death and loss recedes. My attention becomes entwined in daily activities Now, because Now is all there is. I can talk with and email my parents, of course, and I do. Yet these big trips home remind me that we are finite physical beings with a deadline. This awareness abates the more time passes, and I will again be content with the disembodied communication over phone wires and cyberspace. Right now, though, I’m acutely conscious of finitude.

A reader emailed to tell me that she missed my personal posts, the ones that reveal the Deeply Personal Me. Well, here you go. That was the nudge I needed. So now you know what’s been weighing on me. It is what it is.