Do
you ever have the kind of day where no matter what you say or do
things just don’t turn out right? No matter how good your
intentions, you are misunderstood? No
matter how sincere your efforts, you just mess things up? I had
one of those days today. I was feeling incredibly discouraged. I
felt like the work I had done on myself for the past 23 years
was completely in vain. I felt like my contributions to the
Middle East have been absolutely negligible. And I felt like all
the good I have done in the world is far outweighed by the
harmful mistakes I have made. I was on the brink of concluding
that regardless of my strengths and good deeds, I am, in fact, a
failure.
I
was ruminating about the enormous amount of conflicts that have
transpired between myself and others during the past few months.
Conflicts are usually rare in my life so I feel ill equipped to
battle them out. Besides, battling isn’t really my style.
Basically, when it comes to conflicts I just take a lot of deep
breaths, say my peace, listen to the other as best as possible,
and then try to lay low. When it comes to my own life, I am not
a very good conflict resolver, but what I lack in problem
solving, I make up for in patience, so often I make it through
life just by waiting things out. Sooner or later things have a
way of working themselves out. But lately the conflicts,
criticisms, and misunderstandings have been fierce and are
coming at a pretty fast pace. So fast that some days I just want
to scream and shout out to the Universe: What the heck is going
on here?
I am
aware that there are many possible explanations for why,
suddenly, I am caught in a whirlpool of chaos—dark night of
the soul, the via negativa, temptations by the deceiver,
astrological influences, lay lines, lunar persuasions, hormonal
changes, depressive disorder, low self-esteem issues, the
collective unconscious, mythic infiltrations, negative thoughts
creating my external reality, dispossessed spirits tormenting
me, vindictive persons sending me the evil eye, complex partial
seizures, grieving my father’s recent death, and on and on….
The
strongest candidate for a likely explanation of why challenging
thoughts and feelings bombard me now is my environment. I am in
a geographical region where war in nearby Afghanistan and even
nearer war in Iraq is raging just over the border.
Palestinian/Israeli duels are intifadading hours away. My
sensitivity to all of these escalating fronts has reached such a
peak recently that I automatically begin crying when I just
think about turning on the BBC news or opening the Arabic
newspaper. I am a true example of Pavlovian reality and yes, our immediate environment and
conditioning to that environment indeed influences our
behaviors.
So,
after reflecting upon these possibilities, and many more too
numerous to name, I prepared myself today to accept the horrible
truth. Regardless of the cause or reason for my being a failure,
it is too late to change, and acceptance of my fate is the only
way to go. I, who shies away from confrontation, confronted
myself in the mirror. I looked into the weary, vacant eyes
staring back at me and said “Self, be prepared to accept your
defeat. Be prepared to accept the reality that you are a
mediocre person at best, and a loser at worst. You, simply put,
are a failure. ” I cannot remember ever in my lifetime having
such a conversation with myself. Certainly I have been depressed
before, and even suicidal. And often enough I have had
disturbing spiritual experiences causing me to say with
conviction “Get thee behind me Satan.” But what I was
feeling today was something so new and different. This was
preparation to accept resignation, apathy, and defeat as a way
of life, a cultural phenomena to which I have often vowed I would
not succumb.
I
looked at the clock and realized it was time to head for the
hospital. I had an appointment to visit a nurse working on the
women’s surgery ward at the Kuwait Cancer Center. A woman from
Iran, this former nursing student invited me months ago to come
see where she works. I knew she was counting on my visit and
though I was prepared to privately accept my status as
“failure,” I was not prepared or willing to fail her. Even
though my emotions were sagging and my amiability was incredibly
forced, I resigned myself to going through the motions, for her
sake. Hopefully she wouldn’t perceive the inner doom residing
in my heart and I could, in some imperceivably small way, give
her hope.
Then,
horror of horrors, flashes of Miguel Unamuno slipped through my
mind. I recounted one of his short stories I had read 30 years
ago where the leading character, a priest, accepts his fate.
After years of preaching the good news about God, he finally
realizes that there really is no God, only the hope and illusion
of God. With this tragic awareness in his mind, he embraces his
lowly new purpose for living: to perpetuate the myth of God’s
existence in order to give the people hope, knowing all along
the shameful secret that God really is dead.
Well,
I am no priest, and thankfully my rejection of myself this
morning had not yet reached the point of including rejection of
God. But surely resignation, apathy, and defeat pave the way for
such heretical declarations. I remember Episcopal priest,
Matthew Fox, shouting from the podium “Acedia, acedia, people
are dying of acedia….” He
defined the word as akin to hopelessness, apathy, and boredom of
life, a sort of spiritual couch potatoe-itis that leads to
atrophy of the soul. Horror of horrors, shivers of shivers. I
was on my way to living a life of acedia. I couldn’t imagine
at 10:00 am this morning that anything could deter me from this
terrifying, yet seemingly inevitable, course. I was tired of
sending an SOS to God. I was exhausted from trying to bolster my
own spirits.
This
time, I feared, the belief that we are all heroes on an
incredible journey, would be met be a fatigued acceptance that
we are all, well, flawed and failed human beings. I was ever so
close to embracing this belief that perhaps not only myself, but
all humans are no different than Don Quixote battling the
windmills and fluff. In the end, our lives amount to a lot of
excessive expenditure of non-productive energy. And given that
reality, the voice in the head becomes less “Get thee behind
me Satan I’ve got important, redemptive work to do in the
world,” and rather more of “What’s
the use?”
My
driver from India, whose company I normally enjoy, was really
getting on my nerves. He was pleasant and friendly, grinning and
chatting away. But I just wanted to be left alone. Failures
don’t have time for frivolous friendliness. We arrived at the
clinical area where there are many specialized hospitals.
Reluctantly, I went through the motions of thanking the driver,
giving him a tip, and blah, blah, blah. I dragged myself and my
tattered black briefcase up the entrance. This was a new
facility for me with all Arabic signs and only a few in English.
Cynicism crept in, “Why can’t these people speak English
like the rest of the world?” A lot of black veils and curious
black eyes were staring back at me. “Yeah, so what,” I
thought, “See one veil, seen them all,” I wanted to smartly
say under my breath. “What are you looking at? You’ve never
seen blue eyes before. Boo! Evil eye looking back at you.
Maasha’allah blah,
blah, blah….” For
the first time in three years, the thrill of living in these
lands definitely left me. My mind continued, “What is the use
of trying to communicate with these people? I am a complete
disaster in the communications department!”
I
had to admit the marble floors and mustashfa (hospital)
architecture was exquisite. With a giant courtyard in the center
of the lobby, turned into a casual tea area, families were
talking quietly amongst themselves. As I looked up above, beams
of light poured through the glass window ceiling and dozens of
green plants hung from numerous balconies. “This really is a
nice place to be if you have to come for cancer treatment. But,
what’s the use? Aunt Margie died of cancer a few years ago and
then it caught up with Dad and took him away a few months ago.
Sooner or later, we’re all going to die.
Waiting
in the outside lobby of the cancer surgery wards I noticed the
bleaker designs in these areas. Away from the impressive
entrance façade, the real life wards were gray, black, and
boring. The dreary-colored walls matched how I felt. “What’s
the use? If you’re going to die of cancer you might as well
just face it. Don’t try to paint it over with ephemeral
rainbows trying to convince people that this cancer ward is as
good as home. Nothing good can possibly show up on a cancer
ward.”
Waiting,
waiting, waiting. Amina was expected to return to the ward soon.
She called the head nurse and asked her to let me know she would
be delayed because she took a patient to the hospital next door
for an x-ray. “Mu mishkela,” I said to the friendly head
nurse, meaning in Arabic, “no problem.” Besides, I had
absolutely nothing better to do with my life than wait on a
cancer ward with dying patients for a student I taught two years
ago, who I only knew for six short weeks and would probably
never see again after today.
A
heavy sigh came over me. I felt myself sinking into the
comfortable couch and surrendering into acedia. Being a failure
isn’t so bad. I can still live a comfortable life. Besides,
now I don’t have to push myself to work such long hours,
trying to help this person here and mend this cause there. I can
just ride out the rest of the years of my life. Forget the news.
Forget the responsibilities. Khelli welli (forget them!). Forget
the illusion that my life has a purpose. I don’t even have to
give up on God. I can still keep my faith, just turn down the
heat to very lukewarm. Dispense with the prayers and fasting,
let go of the long meditation hours. My life won’t be so bad.
There
will still be nice moments and nice people. I will feel freer to
do what I want with my life, no longer driven and haunted by an
inner conviction shouting “Choose life, choose life.” I will
just while away my hours, comfortably on the sofa with some
books and lots of distractions. Nobody has to really know that I
am a failure. Some of the outward ways of my life will continue.
But the path will be easier for me now. The choices will be
easier. The signs will be clearer. And that doesn’t sound so
bad. Besides, what’s the use of trying to make something great
out of nothing? It’s just a waste of energy. Relax. Take it
easy. Don’t give more than you have to give and be content
with existing.
Just
then the elevator door opened and Amina helped a frail woman in
black back to the cancer ward. My student didn’t see me at
first. Failures are pretty much invisible as they recline back
into oblivion. Then she recognized me and came running over.
“Miss, miss, I’m so happy to see you!” kissing me the way
Arab and Persian women do, fussing over my face, getting giddy
with frivolous delight. I tolerated the attention and walked
agreeably onto the ward, all the while thinking “I just want
to get this meeting over with.”
As
she enthusiastically walked me onto the ward and introduced me
to the staff, I was immediately struck by their friendliness.
Then my eyes were uncontrollably drawn towards all the little
smiley face icons displayed along the walls. On top of the black
and gray painted walls were smiley face bulletin boards, smiley
face magnets, smiley face posters. In fact, wherever you looked
there were smiley faces peering back at you—procedure books at
the nurses station neatly covered with smiley faces, important
publicized documents touched up with smiley faces, notebooks,
binders, window borders, bedroom doors, name badges, employee
lockers, break rooms, coffee mugs, pens and pencils, all
plastered with smiley faces. There was nothing else like this
anywhere in the hospital and it was a very welcoming and
comforting sight.
Amina
excitedly dragged me along the corridor and took me to the break
room. She pulled a camera and gift bag out of her locker and
bounced us back out to the hallway for some photos. “This is
all because of you,” she said regally, as if she had rehearsed
these words for many months. I was completely baffled by her
words and she saw the confused look on my face. The failure in
me could not remotely comprehend what she was saying. “All of
this,” she said as she pointed to the zillions of surrounding
smiley faces in the hallways, on the walls, the doors, the
nurses’ station. Still unable to comprehend what she was
saying, I stood there completely lost.
“Open
the gift, open the gift,” she said jumping up and down. I
stood in the hallway and wearily opened the bag. What I saw
should not have caught me by surprise, because failures lose
their ability to delight in surprises, but I was utterly and
delightedly surprised. Inside were dozens of smiley face gifts.
There were smiley face stickers, smiley face headbands, smiley
face cuddlies, smiley face magnets, smiley face squishy things,
smiley face key chains, smiley face balls, smiley face stick-ons,
smiley face trinkets. I looked up at her with something of a
smile, but still with a bewildered look on my face.
Amina
just sort of shook me as if to say “Snap out of it!” And in
her gregarious tone screeched loudly “MISS!”
Still not quite getting what she was saying and doing I
looked back at her puzzled, unable to grasp the meaning of the
moment. Somewhat exasperated and nearing disappointment, sweet
Amina tried one more time to communicate her message. “Miss
Cathreen, all of this, all these smiley faces, I did all of
this! When I started to work here as a new nurse I did what you
taught us to do. I learned about the importance of a smile from
you! I brought joy to this place. All these smiley faces are
here to help the patients and nurses have happiness and hope. I
brought smiles to this place because of you. This
is ALL BECAUSE OF YOU!!!”
A
fierce wind slapped my face. Suddenly I arose from my stuporous
state. There I stood, with tears streaming down my cheeks, the
failure nowhere in sight, the memory of acedia fading away
quickly like a bad dream chased away in the night. I looked at
Amina with her beautiful black eyes and exquisitely long lashes.
Standing there in her perfectly-ironed white uniform, with a big
smiley face attached to her name badge, she looked like an
angel. I was consumed with awe as she kept repeating “This is
ALL because of YOU…. This is ALL because of YOU….” My
lovely Persian angel, my messenger from the Divine, showered me
with smiley face everythings. How could I have strayed so
dangerously far? What did I do to deserve such wondrous guidance
back?
I share with you now, what the Universe so strongly
shared with me today: You never know how significantly you
impact another. What you do, what you say, who you are, DOES
matter in this world. You DO
make a difference. You are NOT a failure. You are a hero.
You are on an incredible journey. You’ve got important,
redemptive work to do. God is alive and well and is always with
you. Choose life. Life will not turn its back on you. There may
be difficult times. There may be conflicts, sorrows, and
hardships. There may be days of acedia. But in the end, smiley
faces will triumph!
