Walking The Razor's Edge

I've been thinking lately about how we all live on a razor's edge. It seems that our lives and our world are so fragile. One minute, we can be walking around relatively happy and satisfied, and then something can happen completely beyond our control to change everything. Right now, for example, things seem to be going okay for me. I'm happily married. I have an okay job that gives me enough money to get by. I have the freedom and time to pursue my writing to some degree. I have a few good friends and things are okay with my family. But I know that all of that could change so quickly. I could find out that I or someone I'm close to has a serious illness. Some natural disaster could come along and knock my whole life all kilter. I could have a car wreck, lose my job, or become the victim of a serious crime. There's really no limit to all the disasters that could befall me without the slightest warning, and knock me off the razor's edge I currently walk upon so complacently. And what's more, it's not a question of if this will happen, but when.

This is something I find myself thinking about often as I try to go to sleep at night. I often worry that if I become too happy I will jinx myself and cause something bad to happen. I wish I knew some kind of ancient Chinese secret or Jedi mind trick to keep everything bad away from my life. I don't want any part of it. I want things to stay good for me forever. But of course I know in my rational mind that it can't happen and that dreading a tragic, disruptive event occurring in my life is a little like dreading a workday Monday on a Sunday afternoon. I have no control over it coming. I only have control over how I will react when it does.

Of course I haven't been entirely insulated from tragedy in my life, and knowing what it's like probably contributes to my worry that it will come again. When I was fifteen, my mother died of cancer after a year long battle with it, and I can confidently say that it was the pivotal event of my life. I have no idea how my life would be different if it hadn't happened. I only know that it would be. I can also say that when it happened I certainly had no strategy in place regarding how to deal with it. I just kept going, and tried not to worry about it too much although there was no doubt it profoundly affected me regardless of how I tried to pretty much ignore it.

I wonder if I would do the same thing now in similar circumstances, or if growing older and more mature has given me the tools and the wisdom to deal with such events more ably. I don't know and hope I don't have to find out any time soon. I suppose that dealing with tragedy and suffering is traditionally the province of religion, and there's no doubt that it's given great comfort and relief to people throughout history although it seems that different religions have different ideas about the ways suffering should be dealt with. Buddhism and other Eastern religions, for example, teach that the root of all suffering is desire. We suffer because we desire what we can't have, and even satisfying our desires temporarily only leads to more desire and thus more suffering. Therefore a human is better served to quell his desires not by resisting them, but by accepting whatever comes without questioning.

I recall a story I heard somewhere about a Buddhist master who lived in a small, isolated hut in a remote region. One night, a thief breaks into his hut and steals all of the simple possessions that the Buddhist master owns. The master wakes up and catches the thief in the act. The thief is frightened and prepares himself for a fight, but instead the master removes his coat, hands it to the thief, and asks if there is anything else he can give him. Confused, the thief flees into the night. When he is gone, the master goes outside into the cold night, looks up at the moon, and smiles.

The lesson, of course, is that the thief could steal all the master's possessions, but he could not steal the inner peace the master possessed inside of himself. I think this same lesson is also illustrated in some of the teachings of Jesus such as when he tells us to turn the other cheek if we are slapped, and in instructing the rich young man to give all of his possessions to the poor. Jesus, like Buddha, seemed to believe that we did not need possessions or material things to make us rich because true richness only exists within, not without.

Also, the entire appeal of Christianity, it seems to me, is in the story of the horrible suffering that Jesus endures on the cross. The way He handles His pain and fear is what resonates so strongly with people in the world throughout time. It is the reason that Christianity has become one of the world's greatest religions. If Jesus had not suffered in his death, would people have been moved to the same extent? I don't think so.

But I notice an important difference between the Christian way of handling suffering and the Buddhist way when Jesus is resurrected. The resurrected Jesus has transcended the suffering that is such a constant part of the human condition. He no longer feels pain and is no longer at the mercy of the slings and arrows that all mankind is subject to. So, to me, this illustrates that the ultimate way a Christian gets through suffering is to endure it with the knowledge that something better and greater is waiting for us when this life of pain and sorrow is completed. This is in contrast to Eastern teachings which tell us to look inside of ourselves to relieve our suffering without any explicit promise of anything better after death. In some ways, this way of seeing things is more optimistic than the Western way which seems to say there is really nothing to be done to relieve our suffering in this life, but we can look beyond ourselves to a paradise in the next one.

As for me, I simply have no confidence that any afterlife exists at all. Perhaps it's a lack of faith on my part, but the idea of a Heaven or a Hell seems more like wishful thinking to me than anything that is real in the tangible sense of the word. Therefore, I am more inclined to look inside of myself in the here and now as a way to cope with the suffering and the hardships that none of us, as humans, are immune to, and I believe strongly that the way you view things that happen to you are much more important than the things themselves.

Having said that, I certainly am under no illusions that I have any idea of how I will handle real tragedy or misfortune if and when it comes to me. I suspect when it comes down to it, I'm not that much different than my fifteen-year old self who simply did the best he could to deal with a life changing tragedy the only way he knew how. So, in the meantime, I will enjoy the good life I currently have, and keep on walking the razor's edge as carefully as I am able.