If I have not been posting as much as I might, it is because I must first find a way to do something other than rant about what is happening to America, because I am still working on other websites for daily posts, and because I am away from home, my normal routine out of whack as I visit an old friend who is dying, or claims he is.
Except for my siblings, I know no one as long as I have known him and those high-school friends we have in common. I’ve known his wife almost as long.
They are both big time successes, she in particular. She likes to garden too and tells me about a few plants she’s rescued and now nurses along. “I talk to them” she says. “Come on guys. Hang in there. Time to grow.”
“I hope they listen,” I say.
If all of us struggle to one degree or another to take care of ourselves—an extra dessert, a workout skipped, a penny spent rather than earned—there is also a choice to make when a bad diagnosis comes our way: Fight like hell or give in. Far too early in the battle, my friend is waving the white flag, blaming himself for his ill-health. Now taking his medicine is not guaranteed. Seeing the doctor is not automatic. Finding excuses comes quickly.
For myself and our mutual friends and, needless to say, his wife, this defeatist attitude is hard to witness and, so far at least, difficult to influence. A master of evasion, he listens no better than do the plants.
As he sleeps and as she goes off to work, I walk down the hill from their house to investigate the neighborhood, its coffee shops and street life.
In the local bookstore a section of used books offers (as do all such shelves) a snapshot of what people read (or don’t), an impression as inexact, private and satisfying as the intel you gather about a place when people watching from a cafe.
In the psychology/self-help/business section are a few volumes I have read, far more I will never read, and others which will haunt me unless I do. What if, in one of them, is the answer to my friend’s hardheadedness, to say nothing of my own?
But that’s silly. Most of these books offer one or another new-fangled lens on the noble truths about how to live: Be more stoic, stay curious, tend tirelessly to your relationships, practice gratitude, serve others as best you can.
Besides, what’s needed now for my friends (for myself? For America?) is not words or insight but whatever will act as a ball peen hammer to the emotions and the ego. Shatter the shame, fracture the pride, crack open the terror of death. You can surrender to life’s formidable realities with purpose and care.
I walk back up the hill to tell my friend what he is doing is bullshit. He has a wife. He has kids. He owes them better. He agrees. He smiles. I doubt he hears.
Dear Ted,
Thank you for letting us hear where you are physically and mentally and emotionally.
I hope my comment finds you at a time when you feel ready to hear it, and that it brings you some hope for your friend.
Scientific studies suggest that plants do indeed hear: https://now.northropgrumman.com//can-plants-hear-the-science-of-sound-sensing-flora
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B2kDa6GnLjc
The above sources speak of experiments which indicate that plants grow their roots towards water through a sense of sound, and that their flowers produce sweeter nectar when they hear the frequency of a bee’s hum.
I hope your friend will hear you, and his wife, and his kids, and his own spirit. I hope the frequencies which cut through the mental & emotional noise will play loudly and often for him. I hope he finds the strength to go on. I hope, for all of you, that things will be and feel better.
Love,
Efua