Wonderful

I was at yoga the other day when I ran into an old high school acquaintance. We hadn’t seen each other in years. We began casually catching up as we laced our shoes and put on our coats. I kept the focus on her to avoid the inevitable conversation I knew was lurking ahead. Finally, she asked me, “so what have you been up to?” I responded, “nothing.” Right. “I just moved into a house with my brother and sister.” “Are you working or going to school?” she responded. “Neither,” I replied. I can flat-out lie, or I can brace myself for what will follow. I told her about being diagnosed with leukemia and receiving chemotherapy treatment over the last year. She looked at me, smiling widely, and said, “that’s just wonderful.”

It is, to date, the most bizarre response I’ve ever heard when telling someone the news. Maybe she didn’t actually hear what I said. Or maybe she’s on prozac, in which case everything short of nuclear war would be ‘just wonderful.’ Her words stayed with me throughout the day, as we turned our backyard into an Oktoberfest housewarming party. I mingled with friends and family, many surprised to see my hair beginning to grow out. I caught people up on my recent ventures into hippy Hawai’i living and all things raw. Later in the evening I was talking with my good friend Andy about how I stumbled on Puna, Hawai’i as my next destination. This travel experience is different from any other because it came from a place of quiet internal questioning, months and months spent asking my spirit and body what they needed, not only to be sustained, but to be truly happy.

Few if any would look at me and envy my position or what I’ve been going through. Few people, especially young people, like to be reminded that we are finite beings, that our end could be just around the corner. On the other hand, I wouldn’t trade the experience for anything. Now yes, it sucks. Don’t get me wrong. Sucks bollocks. But in moments of clarity I see this journey as an opportunity to have stepped out of a spiritual, emotional and physical pattern that easily could have continued for years, if not decades. It has forced me to sit still and listen to myself quietly, intimately, asking only of myself, “what do you need?” The results, as in the case of Puna, have left me in awe. I am learning how to navigate from a place of peaceful self-inquiry--the heart, not the ego. I told Andy how funny it was that I could have spent the next thirty years searching for a place like Puna, and yet all it took was me sitting myself down for a while and asking, with all sincerity, “what do you need?” The most demanding crucible, it turns out, brought me the simplest enlightenment. And that is—to borrow a phrase—just wonderful.