The Great Discipline Experiment: So What?

Today I was driving down the road to get some papers notarized. My carefully planned schedule was officially off the rails because this thing had suddenly come up. The air was cool and cloudy. It was a two-lane street, but a busy one, with only a shoulder to walk on, no proper sidewalk. Two people were making their way along the road. One was a very bent old woman in a pink sweatshirt, walking quite slowly. The old man behind her was in a wheelchair and could not keep up, so they walked one in front of the other on the uneven surface, cars whizzing by, old lady shaky on her feet, wheelchair bumping along. Or maybe they just felt safer this way; two abreast would have put one of them uncomfortably close to the traffic.

Where were they going? Who were they to each other? When they got where they were going, would there be anyone to love them? Their fragility was unbearable and I wanted to stop the whole world, the cars rushing by, the people with their errands, the cold, damp air, and say: Please stop. Stop for these two people and cradle them somehow. This is how tender and breakable we all are, all of us. And if I can’t stick to my schedule, so fucking what. How could that possibly matter? Human beings are living and dying. Vulnerability is everywhere and what am I doing to be add to the store of kindness and care in this world? In the end the only thing that will matter is how loving I have been on any given day. I realized that today, instead of taking the time to call my mother and father, connect with my husband before his workday takes off, reach out to my sister, check in with friends, I thought only of what I needed to do for myself. These people love me and I love them, still I slot them in somewhere toward the bottom of my to do list (I’m so ashamed of this).

Trying to exact discipline certainly has its noble qualities, but in the end the spirit under which I have undertaken the Great Experiment is one of fear and self absorption. It has been an exercise in poverty thinking and an effort to control the uncontrollable, to push aside everything but my own reality. It makes me feel better and worse to realize this. I still want to give all I have to give to this world, but it’s going to have to be through a dialogue with reality and those I love, not a separation.