Life: Conversations with mom

As a Buddhist I believe that I need to know myself before I can effectively transcend my self. Toward that goal, these past couple years have found me reflecting ever more deeply on the places, people, and events that have shaped me, this ego, here, now. I had dinner the other night with some Buddhist friends and one told me the story of… I think it was Adi Da’s brother… who had a major spiritual emergence and then went around telling people he was Jesus. Now, this got to be a problem, so Adi Da went to his brother finally and said quietly, “yes, I’m Jesus too, there are a lot of us running around, ya know?”

He didn’t deny his brother’s reality, in fact he affirmed it. But he did so in a way that brought him ‘back’ to himself. In spiritual circles I suppose it’s not much to become Jesus at some point or another, the key is to have enough of you there to bring you back so you can live in this world. If you transcend your self without knowing yourself, you’re in for trouble, what would probably be diagnosed as a psychotic episode.

When I taught Buddhism at the U. I suggested much the same: that we generally begin our spiritual journeys like a big matted mess of yarn, our life-goals conflict, our immediate desires conflict from one day to the next, our social situations are sometimes conducive to a good life, sometimes terribly non-conducive, and so on. Our first step isn’t to start knitting a sweater out of that. First we need to unravel the mess that is us (and in our society I’m convinced that even the best of us, with great parents, good education, solid communities and the rest are still a mess at some point). We then need to pick out a dominant direction in life and begin wrapping the strings of our existence around that until who we are becomes something approaching that ball of yarn: coherent, deep and with its own twists and turns, but overall just together.

Then, and only then, can we begin knitting the great sweater of life, and who we are dissolves into the work we do and the lives we touch. In Freudian terms we begin with the conflicts of the superego and id, consolidate/overcome them with the ego, and (beyond Freud here) unravel and transcend that ego.

And all of that is just the introduction…

Mom.

I must say that my mother is at the extremes of my life. That is, when I am at my very best, she is the one cheering me on and when I am at my worst, she is the one I go to for consolation. My father is the sturdy rock that I am so often compared to: solid, calm, warm, and modestly cheerful. My mom has a huge heart, she feels strongly, and she lets you know just how she feels.

Tonight our conversation turned to Michael Moore’s new film, Sicko. My mother has worked in health care for over thirty years, first as a nurse and group-home coordinator (I’ll have to double-check for details), then returning to college for degrees in psychology and social work. She then worked as a social worker for over a decade before taking a job with the state’s Children’s Mental Health Bureau. Needless to say, the film riled her up. I could see the stress and sadness, and anger, as she related stories, weaving those from the film in with many from her own experience.

The question I kept coming back to was, “what can we do?” Her answer frequently was something like, “we need big changes, we need new elected officials, ones who care… But even Hilary Clinton is taking big money from the insurance companies…” and more sadness, almost bewilderment, flashed across her face. “But what can we do?” I asked again, “you and I.”

Then we had what I could only affectionately call a Kelly moment, where together we nudged this way and that until something just clicked. And it was simple: write Congress (House / Senate). How better could she drive the change she wants to see in the world than to channel her energy and knowledge into letters to, and eventually conversations with, our elected officials? “This could be big,” I told her, “you’re just the kind of person that they want to, no, need to be discussing health care with. I can just see you as one of these great citizens who steps forward to really change things for the better.” A smile melted the tired tension from her face, “I’ll start with the letter.”

So there it was. In one sitting a microcosm of the great project of life: starting tattered and messy, pulling it together, and moving onward creatively.