The Greatest Gift

"The capacity to give one's attention to a sufferer is a very rare and difficult thing; it is almost a miracle, it is a miracle." -- Simone Weil

The greatest gift is a miracle. It's an expression of some part of yourself that you give to someone else. The thing you give to that person is very nearly beside the point. It's just the means by which the transfer of you to the other person takes place. By you, I mean your essence, a piece of your spirit.

In reality, the materials we give to each other can get in the way. As much as we like our stuff, and we do, believe me, I have stuff and I like stuff, using stuff as a gift only works when it complements our purpose, rather than deflecting it. What does genuine gift-giving try to accomplish? Well, I want the person on the receiving end of my gift to know how I feel about them. In some way, large or small, I want to grow together with that person.

I want to create an understanding. I want to strengthen our connection.

Sometimes, however, a material gift does get in our way, deflecting us from our purpose. Because of that, I feel that no material gift, regardless of how pure or thoughtful or amazing it is, can be considered the greatest. The greatest gift cuts out the middleman. Rather than a simple expression, the greatest thing you can give is yourself.

Giving yourself means giving your attention to someone. In the context of the greatest gift, attention means something beyond its common meaning. It usually is social contact, chitchatting, and simple interaction. This kind of attention can be given easily and can easily be insincere. Giving your true attention to someone is much more complex than that. It is important to really devote yourself to that person in your experience of them. It is not easy. It takes spiritual energy to be attentive to the spiritual needs of someone else.

Listen.

Be with the other person. That's what it's really all about. The greatest gift between two people is a coming together.

The greatest gift in appearance would be quite commonplace: a dad playing football with his son, a teacher tutoring her student after hours, a priest counseling one of the troubled faithful, a doctor & nurse treating a patient, best friends reminiscing, two lovers in bed. These are all basic examples with matter-of-fact explanations. They don't have to be instances of the greatest gift. Parenting, teaching, ministry, medicine, friendship, and sex can just be what they are. Then again, that's only looking at the appearance, and the greatest gift is all about essence. The identity of a thing is derived from its essence.

Care (again, remember the truer definition of the term) is crucial in determining when a miracle of interpersonal exchange is happening. That decides the intentions of the gift-giver. Anything can be done physically, denying the spiritual element in whole or in part. The greatest gift is given with full integrity because only the two people involved can decide to believe that it is sincere, and only the giver can know for sure if it is.

We are all sufferers. That is part of being human. When you give yourself, when you give genuine, true attention to someone who is suffering, that is a miracle. Devotion, listening, and truly being with someone... those things create a spiritual connection. And that allows the father to show his love to his son feeling too much stress. This kind of giving lets the teacher spend some quality time with her student who might feel lost. It gives the priest a chance to really guide someone in crisis. Devoted medical professionals finally get to care for the person as a whole. Best friends can really listen to each other and see where they are in their lives. And, being together allows two lovers to find acceptance in a physical act of love.

These are the greatest gifts. These are miracles.

Endurance

Note: This is a long one.

There are many kinds of endurance in life. The one I needed when my lung collapsed was very different from some other ones I've needed. It started with a complete drop in my spirits the moment I was diagnosed. I'll never forget it. I was somewhat concerned going in, just considering the fact that the chest pain I was experiencing had lasted for about a week. But I was concerned in the way you think, "I really should get this thing checked out and fixed." I had no idea what I was in for, but I recognized it the instant I saw the x-ray results. My heart dropped.

With as much experience with medical situations as I have had, I could almost say I have an amateur background in medicine. I can make educated guesses about the causes of symptoms I have or other people tell me about. Most medical professionals, when they meet me, also recognize that they can speak intelligently (as far as medicine goes) with me about whatever condition they are treating. Most especially, I have had enough x-rays that I can recognize basic and/or obvious issues pretty quickly. That was the case with my pneumothorax. I saw this steeply angled black triangle going diagonal from the top of my chest to my lower right side. Well, guess what, black in the middle of an x-ray is bad.

I remember sort of sinking my head back, almost before the doctor gave his diagnosis. Since I'd never heard of the technical term, pneumothorax, it gave me a moment of what was ultimately false hope when he said so matter-of-factly, "Oh yeah, he has a pneumothorax." Then he pointed it out, to be sure, and said, "Your right lung is completely collapsed." Even though, I have a good amount of basic medical knowledge, there are some areas that concern my health where fear overtakes thinking through the situation logically. Critical respiratory issues are one of those areas.

The tears were hard to restrain when the diagnosis hit home. I had a real mix of emotions at the time. I wanted to simply panic, but my stronger side held that in check because I think I knew deep down that the best thing I could do was listen to the doctor and prepare for whatever treatment was to come. Honestly, nothing could have prepared me. The doctor told me what he needed to, so I would understand the procedure, but nothing more, so I wouldn't go running for the hills.

Even not being fully aware of the pain I would endure, I was really scared. It's funny the different responses to fear people have. My reaction was to e-mail a lady friend of mine to whom I was close and hope for her support, even if it was just by knowing she would read it the next day. Thinking back, there are many reasons I chose her, but mostly it was because I assumed she could handle the bad news in its unresolved form. How presumptuous of me! And it was at the time, but the nice thing about hindsight is that now I know she was the perfect choice. Indeed, she wrote to me that night, comforting me, and telling me she was there. It was something crucial to hold on to during the following day with the procedure looming.

I awoke the next morning too early, naturally, and quickly got dressed and into the chair. My routine at the time was to take my morning medicine and then put on the breathing machine for an hour to make me comfortable. So I did that. Problem was, I had some bad pressure in my head and legs. Stress. Since we had to get to the hospital so early, I was only able to take half the time on the breather. The shortness of breath amped up the pain. Then it was time to get in the car.

It was cold. I remember vividly how freezing I felt when I got in the car. It was so, so cold. Of course, I asked for some heat but I barely began warming by the time I arrived at the hospital and had to get out. The rest of the ride I spent focused on breathing, both to compensate for the shortness and as meditation to fight the pain. This ride was way too short.

As much as I wanted the ride to take as long as possible, the wait I went through once I actually arrived at radiology was agonizing. At that point, when there was no escape, I just wanted to get it over with. I was still in terrible pain, hunched over and waiting for the key parts of my working lung to open up, and afraid. They called my name, and immediately that stuff meant nothing, well, except for the afraid part. There was just no way I would be mentally prepared in time.

I remember one of the office workers who takes care of registration coming in the radiology room and putting on my bracelet, and then the nurse who made the comment I'll never forget. To all the radiology nurses out there, please don't ever say this to a patient asking about the pain of having a lung reinflated: "Most patients describe it as annoying." Wow. Really didn't know how to take that one, so I disregarded it and focused on getting on the table & making sure I was as comfortable as possible. Amazing how little that mattered. After I got settled, I had to be alone except for the nurses and doctor. I was too disoriented to worry about that, and now I'm glad that no one stayed to watch the procedure.

There was this giant active x-ray machine over me, about 6 inches from my face. I'm lucky that I don't get claustrophobic, but I certainly felt like I was in it, in this thing 'til the end, and there was nothing I could do about it. The radiologist walked in, ready to go, and introduced himself. He rubbed some freezing cold alcohol on me and then marked a blue dot way over on the side of my right pectoral between two ribs. A lovely target. Then he put a sterile blue field over the area that actually sort of covered my face. It was disorienting, but looking back, it was good to be blocked from the vision of what the radiologist was doing. Last was the almost completely useless local anesthetic that could not possibly reach the area that needed it most. Then came the main event.

I felt the needle slide in the very superficial flesh, knowing I could take that. But then it met some stiff resistance: the chest wall. He said, "Okay here we go." As good a job he did, that innocent sentence struck the most fear into me. Before I could ask him what he was talking about, I felt him push really hard, I heard a pop, and there was a lightning strike. I knew then why God created the word, “fuck,” and I used that wisdom many times. Luckily, since I couldn't breathe, I couldn't say anything very loud. Soon, I was appealing to God directly. That was the worst pain in my life. I could not imagine being stabbed for real. The needle took a chest tube in with it so that the air in my chest cavity could be sucked out. It felt like a sumo wrestler sitting on my chest, and the pain was so, so unbearable as the lung re-expanded. Finally, the nurse asked if she could give me morphine. I answered, "Yes," almost before she finished asking me the question. First, the drugs brought me back to sanity and then I could actually feel good later when I was resting in an actual hospital bed.

Unfortunately, that is not the end as it I ended up requiring a hospital stay. But that is a different kind of endurance. And a morphine vacation is a much better way to end the day.

Broken

Update for Thursday, September 6, 2007: I'm very pleased with how this entry turned out, so I've decided to leave it up for today as well. Until next week... hope you enjoy.

All people feel broken at certain points during their lives. To not feel broken is to lie to oneself or to live a terribly safe, sterile existence. I believe being broken is one of the fundamental aspects of life. On its face, it is not something I take comfort in, but I've grown to respect the fact that it should be acknowledged and accepted. Again, this realization doesn't make anything easier. Quite frankly, it is just one of the sucky things you learn about growing up. However, if each one of us did not break in some way, there would be many things in our lives we would not need and thus many things we would not have.

There are many ways to be broken. People make poor decisions or have lapses in judgment or possess character flaws, and those in turn affect reputation. Many live under strained financial situations or find themselves jobless, which hurts stable finances. Others suffer in health. Mentally or physically, they could have lifelong issues from birth or freak accidents or late developing diseases. Even more people see relationships with loved ones end or change. Tons of people face some or all of the issues I've mentioned, others face only one, and some face other issues I didn't list. For other people, the simple knowledge of living the aforementioned safe, sterile existence is what breaks them.

In all these situations, a piece or all of a person is broken. Time assures us that they will never be the same. And often, they cannot be fixed, in whole or in part. What do we do with these broken pieces? In a way, the broken pieces add up to a life. As a group, we respond to this suffering, this brokenness, in two ways.

The oft quoted teaching that suffering brings about compassion is true, in my experience. One way we respond to being broken is through communal means. The compassion from a person's surrounding community can be crucial in their response. This includes friends, family, organizations, churches, charities, and schools. If I may be naïvely optimistic for a moment, we as a society even have compassion-based careers. Nurses & doctors, teachers, and even holy men are just a few examples. All of these communal support systems originate from one group: our loved ones. That is precisely what the communal response to suffering does. It allows us, more fully, to love and be loved.

There is another type of response to brokenness, and that is through personal means. You can pick your own "struggle-through-adversity" cliché. They all apply. You learn a lot about yourself when you stare down that barrel. All the mentoring in the world can only provide you with the tools for character building, actual character can only be made by you. Your personal response to your own suffering is the best means to that end. Again, brokenness provides a vehicle. In the case of the personal response, it allows us to see who we are and to build ourselves into what we want to be.

Although the broken pieces often cannot be fixed, we can still heal. There will be scars and baggage left along the way, but ultimately one of the main things life is about is the cycle of brokenness, response, and healing. It is a struggle with many twists and turns, and no positive guarantees, but it has to be. It certainly is not always the way we want, but the personal and communal responses help us heal and some way, somehow, we move on.

This healing can hopefully help our situations. If a relationship ends, perhaps healing helps us to understand why. If it changes, healing allows us to grow and find a new role and accept that. For those with health concerns, maybe healing is reflected in an improvement of the condition. Maybe it isn't, and instead we find a way to make peace with it. As far as character goes, healing gives us a direct path to making ourselves better. None of these processes is easy. All of it involves the awareness that parts of growing up suck. However, I know I wouldn't have any of the things I have without my personal response to brokenness and the support of the people who love me & the people I love.

It's a wonderfully awful, amazing, dangerous, down-and-dirty, beautiful, exciting, suffering-riddled, shitty, character-building, pleasure-filled, painful, lovely life!


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