This month's Scientiae is about how I managed to get over major bumps or humps in the road. Lately, I've been thinking a lot about wumps because frankly, over the last year and a bit, there have been many.
1. My dad died.
2. Issues of his last estate led to a legal embattlement.
3. Hernia operation.
4. Brain tumor.
5. Brain surgery
6. HippieHusband fired from the lab by a power hungry silverback.
7. Complications from brain surgery result in a follow-up surgery.
8. HippieHusband resigns from his job.
Sigh. Yeah, bad shit happens.
But if we think only of the only bad things that happen, then how we live our life is simply reactionary. And when I look around at my colleagues, especially in academia, I see many of us driven by the circumstances of life. We live putting out fires, from one fire to the next, without permission for self-reflection or more importantly, quietude.
I once heard that listening for a theme in your life and steering by that theme is a much more active way to live. Instead of passively existing and thus letting things happen, it's better to look for the connections in the events of our life. These events are connected by a theme. Find the theme and then it's easier to find a voice. If I were to to think about my life to date - I think the theme is transition, movement, and change. Now knowing that, how do I live? I think like this,
Once upon a time, in a village in Japan was living a reputable Buddhist monk.
Next to him lived a family of wealthy merchants who had a beautiful daughter.
One day, what seemed like out of the blue, her parents discovered that she was pregnant. Her father was very angry and pressed her to tell who the father of the child was. At first, she wouldn't tell, but eventually she confessed that he was their neighbor, the Buddhist monk.
The merchant went at once to the Buddhist monk.
"Ah, so desu ka?" was all that the monk said to his angry neighbor.
When the child was born, the merchants gave him to the monk to take care of him, and they told everybody the story of their unfortunate daughter and of the two-faced monk.
The monk had nobody to leave the baby with, and so he carried him everywhere he went. All the villagers who previously had regarded the monk highly were now calling him an immoral man, but he didn't care; he was raising the child with utmost care.
Twelve years passed.
One day, the child mother's became terminally ill; but she did not want to die with a lie so she confessed to her parents that she had lied about the child's father: he was a young man working in the fish market, not the buddhist monk.
They all went at once to the monk to apologize and get the baby back, telling him the truth.
"Ah, so desu ka?" was all that the monk said, returning them the child.
Instead of working hard to resist change, be it negative or positive, I would like to be like the monk in the story and develop an attitude of "ah so." Living without judgement of myself and others.
As a general rule, I am extraordinarily impatient with life. In part, this impatient nature has arisen because I had a certain vision of how I hoped life would turn out, how I would turn out. But, I'm a work-in-progress. After all as Ralph Waldo Emerson put it, "Our greatest glory is not in never failing, but in rising up every time we fail."
All in all, it's a pretty good ride. And really, that's the crux of how I get through the difficulties. Attitude
Every night before I go to bed, I try to think of at least one thing that I am grateful for that day. I can't say that it has been easy to figure out why I should be grateful. Sometimes it's only for a moment that I feel generous, but a moment is still a moment.
So to counter the first list here is a second list, this time of things I'm truly grateful for.
1. I am no longer trapped by parental expectations.
2. I didn't die. I have, for the most part, my health.
3. HippieHusband and I have a stronger relationship because of the challenges.
4. I am loved.
5. I have had my eyes opened to the worst possible face of academia.
6. My identity has broadened. I realize that I don't need to find a tenure-track position as an assistant professor. Academia is only one of many options. And it may not be the best option.
7. I am more attune to the political dynamics of an academic workplace.
8. I learned what kind of supervisor I don't want to be and what kind of colleagues I don't want to have.
When I think of these I am full, calm, warm and spacious.
So I leave you with this quote that inspires me during the times when I can't think beyond the hardship,
"May we exist like a lotus,
At home in the muddy water,
Thus I bow to life as it is."
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