Letting Go of Stress
I teach a class by that title at the Westport Center for Senior Activities monthly, on a Wednesday afternoon in a messy art room lent to us for an hour of calm. Both of my boys laughed heartily when I told them about this new gig because they know all too well that despite yoga teacher training and reiki master certification, I don’t always remember, never mind practice, what I preach.
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“Please enter your username and password,” beckoned the screen.
I did.
“Username and password do not match our records. Please enter your username and we will send you a link to reset your password.”
I did. No reset password email ever arrived.
“Please fill in this form to re-enroll.”
I did.
“That email is already in use. Please log in.”
I tried. Thrice.
I have osteoporosis and need a biannual injection of Prolia to prevent my bones from crumbling to so much dinosaur dust. Each shot costs $1,500. My very expensive, very high deductible health insurance plan would force me to absorb the full cost along with the medication. Amgen, however, offers a program through which patients can get the jab for a $25 copay. It was for entry into this program that I struggled to log on.
“If you are still having trouble logging on, please call our Customer Service team. Because Amgen cares.”
I did. Thrice. On three separate days. Three hours of my life I can never get back. And on each occasion, Jasmine, Monica, and Judea promised that they understood, and could help me. Their tones and demeanours suggested that their manicures interested them more than I did, but they were my only life line.
They each repeated the same stock script, asking if I’d tried to reset my password. Yes. Tried to log in again. Yes. And finally each promised, with increased exasperation, that they’d try to reactivate my account. Jasmine and Monica failed at this and promised to “write up a ticket” and forward it to the grand poobahs of Amgen account revival and call me back. Neither did. When Judea made the same promise I told her my sad saga and asked to speak with a supervisor. She sighed and clicked her tongue; I could hear her eyes roll.
“Please hold.”
I did. For 38 minutes. Just as tears pooled at my lower eyelids and I felt ready to wave the white flag of surrender, Judea came on. She reported that she had miraculously reset my now active account and I could log in with the clever “Welcome123” password. She paused, I suppose for me to tell her I’d nominate her for a Nobel Peace Prize for her efforts, and then asked that I remain on the line for a brief customer satisfaction survey.
I did.
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I took half of the call with Judea in the car en route to an event at a local museum. By the time I hung up my shoulders clung like earrings from my earlobes. I gripped the steering wheel with the fervor of a beginning golfer strangling the club. I missed all the budding spring brilliance because I was mired in my own misery.
Early to the event (surprise) I sat for a few minutes in the gallery chatting to the speaker Ameen, his soft, subdued tones (clothing and voice) in stark contrast to the shouty neon sculptures surrounding us. This forty-ish, tall, lanky, and man-bunned musician described how ISIS had infiltrated and now occupied what he lovingly described as his home city of Mosul. He struggled through administrative red tape and political resistance for five years to gain the visa allowing him to leave Iraq and perform on this US tour. At home, he said, when he woke each day, he knew that he might not live to see the next. We all know that theoretically; he knows it viscerally. ISIS proscribes music for anything other than religious purposes, so his stringed instruments place a vivid target squarely on his back.
And I had driven over in a snit because of a customer service snafu. I thanked him out loud for making the Herculean effort to get here and share both his story and his music. And silently for the reminder about relativity that the universe sent me through him.
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Ameen addressed a group of about ten in the concrete-floored and -walled gallery space. He touched on the geopolitical, cultural, and religious climate of his country. He mesmerized us with tales of Iraqi musicians who carved the instruments and paths he uses today. And brought us to the brink of tears with photographs of ISIS destroying stunning, statuesque mosques for trivial, immaterial reasons.
A couple behind me clearly felt that Ameen addressed the presentation to them. And that the same universe that had filled me with humility had clearly imbued them with exclusive and complete knowledge of and entitlement to everything.
They monopolized his time by regaling him with their own (irrelevant and uninteresting) experiences, and peppered him with off-topic questions. When the woman pointed out the hypocrisy rife within Islam, I piped up, despite my better judgment and ignoring the Jiminy Cricket of self-restraint: “Certain followers of all religions exhibit hypocrisy at times.”
She turned cooly and shot her dagger gaze at me and said loudly
enough for everyone to hear: “YOU clearly have no idea what you’re talking about because YOU haven’t lived there.” I shook my head in Foghorn Leghorn incredulity - surely I misheard and she didn’t just say that out loud?
Only when a museum representative patted me empathetically on the shoulder, and Ameen stopped in his eloquent tracks and stared at me with sad puppy eyes, and the rest of the room froze mid-motion did I realize that I’d heard her correctly. She did not skip a beat, and went on to regale Ameen with her costume jewelry pearls of wisdom. She swatted me like an annoying gnat. Like ISIS might do to a pesky musician. The irony was clearly lost on her.
I watched the remainder of the presentation in quaking silence, hands folded in my lap. I shouted several clever and cutting retorts at her in the privacy of my own mind. Then I slashed her tires and keyed her car in my imagination. And ultimately did nothing but thank Ameen for his visit and his talk, and exited quickly.
Despite the universe’s tap on the shoulder that had quelled my angst on arrival at the museum, I felt much the same way on the ride home as I did on the ride over.
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And then. Bianca’s (I name my cars) screen announced a call from my college roommate. She who always counsels me wisely when I begin to unravel. One of her closest friends, a man exactly our age with whom she attended law school, had suffered an ascending aortic dissection in the lobby of his building. The more serious of the two such events (as opposed to descending), he would likely have died had he been alone in his apartment. He was unconscious after a six hour operation and the doctors had given him a grim prognosis.
Her distress and the gravity of the situation once again reminded me of relativity. “So what?”: A phrase we like to ask ourselves in discussing our woes. So what that an insecure and self-important woman had treated me no better than an eighth grade mean girl would have? I pulled on my big lady panties and focused on the more important issue at hand. We both hoped that her friend would live to hold hers again.
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And then. And then I drove the rest of the way home imagining myself leading the “Letting Go of Stress” class in the crowded Senior Center art room. I took several deep breaths. I acknowledged my inability to rewrite history: the Prolia calls would always have happened. The dragon woman would always have torn into me at that lecture.
I consciously chose to respond rather than react - I’d wasted an inordinate amount of time doing the latter of late. I decided not to cede one more moment of this glorious early spring evening to Amgen or dragon lady. My shoulders disengaged from my ears. The steering wheel felt my death grip loosen. I laughed at something funny John Mulaney said on Sirius XM, and the lilacs continued to bloom.
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A Zen Parable:
A senior monk and a junior monk were traveling together. At one point, they came to a river with a strong current. As the monks were preparing to cross the river, they saw a very young and beautiful woman also attempting to cross. The young woman asked if they could help her cross to the other side.
The two monks glanced at one another because they had taken vows not to touch a woman.
Then, without a word, the older monk picked up the woman, carried her across the river, placed her gently on the other side, and carried on his journey.
The younger monk couldn’t believe what had just happened. After rejoining his companion, he was speechless, and an hour passed without a word between them.
Two more hours passed, then three, finally the younger monk could contain himself any longer, and blurted out “As monks, we are not permitted a woman, how could you then carry that woman on your shoulders?”
The older monk looked at him and replied, “Brother, I set her down on the other side of the river, why are you still carrying her?”
Clear-eyed as ever, Diane. Thank you.
We all need reminding every day! Thanks for reading