Dear Friends, Family, Neighbors, and Those of You I Don’t Yet Know —
On Sunday morning, we switched from Standard Time to Daylight Savings Time yet again. Americans argue about whether DST is a good thing or not. But with the exception of some parts of Arizona, we’ve continued to set our clocks forward by one hour every spring — lately, the second Sunday of March. It’s one of the few things that haven’t deeply divided us. Almost everyone seems to love having an extra hour of daylight in the evening to use as we please. For most of us, the only real question has been whether to keep it seasonal or make it the case year-round, thereby saving ourselves the inconvenience of getting up an hour early once each year.
One of the things Daylight Savings Time means to me is that it’s almost time to plant my vegetable garden — that is, in a normal weather year. So far, though, 2023 has been anything but normal. It’s still cold out, at least for these parts, and rainy, too. I’ve had to keep my seedlings indoors all this time, and they are leggy and weak from lack of sun. Sometime tonight, the latest in a long string of atmospheric rivers will descend on us. The last one resulted in mudslides, a broken levee, flooded houses, and collapsed roofs. Mother Nature always inspires awe, but this year, she’s pretty far over the top.
As you will know if you read the last issue of Odd Company, my husband had a long-awaited lung transplant about three weeks ago. I didn’t have the energy to find a piece of music for that issue. Maybe it was fate working behind the scenes. Because not long after that issue came out, a friend and reader mentioned this recent song by American blues singer and guitarist Bonnie Raitt. Raitt doesn’t write many songs, but she wrote this one, “Just Like That,” inspired by an article about a transplant recipient meeting his donor’s mother. I admit that I cried the first time I listened to it, because it is so beautiful, and because I’m very familiar with some of the feelings it describes. I’m not surprised that it won a couple of Grammys this year.
We knew ahead of time that recovery from a lung transplant can be quite a challenge. The surgery itself is difficult, and the whole business of getting a body to accept the new tissues as its own is complicated, involving about a dozen different drugs in the beginning, and consequently many clinic visits for blood tests and x-rays, a special diet, and physical therapy. Initially, John was able to come home from the hospital after about eight days. What a joy it was to see him breathing without extra oxygen, after a year of intimate attachment to an O2 tank! But a week after that, he began to have trouble breathing again, and was soon back in the hospital, where he has been ever since with various complications. He does seem to be slowly getting better.
As soon as John got onto the transplant list, his brother and sister both volunteered to help in whatever ways they could. And boy, have we ever needed help! There are daunting tasks everywhere, including organizing countless pills; making a daily note of John’s vital signs and weight; getting him to his many appointments; and keeping track of all the questions that come up. Not to mention the marathon eight-hour wait in the emergency room the day John had to go back to the hospital. If I had needed to do all of that myself, I would probably have ended up in the hospital, too, suffering from sheer exhaustion. There simply aren’t enough hours in the day.
I haven’t even mentioned yet the whole business of keeping us fed while all this has been happening. Seeing our need, and wishing to help, friends and neighbors have organized to bring us a delicious meal each evening, often with wonderful extras — home-baked desserts and breads, a bottle of special wine, seasonal soups. Almost everyone we know is helping in whatever ways they can think of. All of this melts my heart and makes me feel held and loved in the most extraordinary way. If I could say thank you a bzillion times, it wouldn’t be nearly enough.
This week I came across a quotation by the essayist Leslie Jamison, pointed out by Robert Sapolsky in a discussion of empathy and compassion.
“[Empathy] can…offer a dangerous sense of completion: that something has been done because something has been felt. It is tempting to think that feeling someone’s pain is necessarily virtuous in its own right. The peril of empathy isn’t simply that it can make us feel bad, but that it can make us feel good, which can in turn encourage us to think of empathy as an end in itself rather than part of a process, a catalyst.”
Also this week, I’ve been reading Awakening the Soul, by Michael Meade. Meade underwent a significant inner transformation during months of solitary confinement in a military stockade during the Vietnam War. He concluded, like many before him, that we can’t lead a true and honest life until we are able to get beyond seeing the world mainly in terms of how it affects us personally.
It seems eons ago that I began Odd Company with a definition of compassion. I said, “Compassion is the desire to alleviate suffering…but action is always required to make compassion manifest in the world.” I had a number of questions from readers who confessed that empathy was so painful that it often made them turn away without offering compassionate action. The key, as it is so often, is in how we view the situation.
If I look at someone who is suffering, and I imagine how I would feel if that were happening to me, my heart rate will speed up. My stomach might clench. And my first instinct will be to close my eyes and turn away so I won’t have to keep suffering along with the other person. Feeling that I’ve suffered with the other person, I might very well conclude that I’ve done enough simply by experiencing my own pain on their account.
If I look at someone who is suffering and I try instead to imagine how they must be feeling, I’m not thinking about myself at all. I’m thinking entirely about them, and I’m doing it with a certain amount of detachment from myself and my own issues. Because I’m not feeling overwhelmed by my own discomfort, I have the emotional room to do something kind for the other person.
This may seem like a subtle difference. But it is the difference between a lonely world and the world my husband and I have enjoyed these past weeks, surrounded by so many compassionate friends, family, and neighbors.
Tonight I’ll end with a poem I wrote a few years ago, inspired by the German poet Rainer Maria Rilke. Till next time…be kind. :-)
AFTER READING RILKE'S AUTUMN
I make a fire in the hearth,
to feel its warmth, to watch
its light leap up against dark
and the falling, falling rain
and all of the poet's falling:
of leaves, of stars, of Earth,
of everyone's helpless hands, afraid
this night -- of the final climb
to a grassy plateau where
the galaxy's edge bands
the sky, dipping each blade,
each murmured trill in silver,
where in all this falling I
must cross the known stream,
mount the black horse
a last time and trust him
to carry me on the curve
of his back, trust him to know
the way home, to the One
who gently holds all fallen
and the falling world.