Sylvia's Journal

Winter has finally started here. I know that it has because my tea froze while Sita and Jim were stacking firewood. It’s a good time for me to think back to how things have changed over the last few weeks. My vision isn’t doubled any more. I can walk and move around without it feeling like somebody is hitting me with an ice pick. I can go a few days without missing an appointment and I only have one list of things to do, not 5. I’m feeling good enough to apply for my driver’s license-which expired-and not be afraid of crashing through the front of a store.

I still get tired easily but on the other hand I’m apt to stay up late and get up at 7:30.

I don’t have as much energy as Sylvia but then again who does? I think the trick for me has been to focus on the most important things – which of course begs the question of ‘What is the most important thing?’ There is a quote from the German poet Rilke which asks ‘ What will you do with the rest of the day ? ‘ That question serves to focus me on the here and now and not so much on some distant point in the future. And by focusing on the present I somehow become more real. I am less able to convince myself that I ought to be doing something big, something important, or something that causes me to ignore what’s happening around me.

It’s a real shift to not be so driven by a vision but instead to be shaped in my actions by my own feelings right here, right now. It’s not that I can be ignoring the necessities of the present-like money or appointments. But I can be attracted to a conversation with a friend or to taking a picture of a flower. Not to be doing something that feels important right now means that I’m missing opportunities – possibilities that exist now, possibilities that won’t exist in the future. This seems to be the antidote to the phenomenon of regrets for missed chances. And I know that life is too short for that.

But this society – and my upbringing – seems to demand of us a commitment to a vision, a specific outcome that’s worth a lot in terms of sacrifice and missed chances. I can’t even count the opportunities that I consciously turned down because I was committed to some outcome that was firmly implanted in my brain. And what was implanted in my brain was often unrealistic in terms of ‘ do-ability ‘ or inappropriate for my personality or my values.

It seems important to me to be in a mode of searching for the things that I’m going to be doing for the rest of the day rather than being already committed to something. So, I’m starting to do more graphics work, printing larger and different versions of my work and really not thinking about a job as a graphics consultant, a business analyst, or a strategic planner. I am carrying a pencil around, and even an eraser, and looking at things as I did when I was learning to draw. I’m not reading Fast Company magazine so much for finding out who’s doing hot stuff, but to look for ideas of things that are interesting to me.

And so as I begin to wake up from the sleepwalk that has characterized the last few months, I find myself with a very different sense of time, and what it means to me. It’s much more precious and choosing what I will do with the rest of the day seems the most important question. I’m very thankful to have the choice. And I’m very thankful to have Sylvia back with us tomorrow.

Today is the 1st day that I have woken up without Sylvia beside me. Very odd and unsettling. Not from the point of feeling helpless or any of the earlier things associated with rehabilitation but with wondering how she’s going to do in the bigger world where rehab rules don’t play so well, where timeliness is an assumption, speed necessary, exhaustion isn’t condoned and full mobility is expected.

She’s gone to a 3 day meeting of the Organizational Behaviour Teaching Conference (OBTC) at Babson College in Wellesley. It’s a group of people who she loves to be with and with whom she hits some of her highest creative peaks. The group has always been concerned with addressing one of the most basic of humanistic questions – how do you use education to lead people to be more inquiring and to think more fully about advocacy. In the OBTC case this takes place in schools of management – business schools – where inquiry and advocacy are perhaps more important – and arguably in less supply – because of the centrality of commerce in shaping the direction of our nation. And, did I say that getting to inquiry and advocacy is often incredibly fun with this group? Makes going back to school – or teaching in one – seem a great idea.

My energy level seems to be getting better as I’m getting better at attacking the really stiff muscles and restrengthening my legs and back. I can’t say enough for the complementary effects of massage – and Abi Axelrod – to physical therapy and exercise. I’m feeling more whole. Having people talk about and manipulate one body part as if the rest were non-existent isn’t much to make you feel whole.

Where’s the energy going?

Into therapy, mental and physical and spiritual; lots into conversations with good friends, and walking. And I’ve been producing a set of greeting cards for Chuck and Anzie and lacking good business sense, I’ve been modifying them, revising things I did at the outset of my graphic design program and trying some new things. The focus is great – and welcome and unusual – but the speed of delivery is probably not what it ought to be. Well, another instance of the rehab world colliding with th real world. I hope Sylvia is having a soft collision.

And Sita’s birthday is tomorrow and Tessa is climbing further into the graphic design world in Canada. We are so blessed.