Why should I give a shit about eternity? Part II: The passion of Buddha

So I shouldn't give a shit about eternity.  But, of course I do.  It makes me wonder if I have been giving religion an unnecessarily bad rap.  Religion's purpose is to provide purpose.  It hides the existential emptiness inherent to self-consciousness under a pillow of soft, warm bullshit.  The bullshit bothers me. It enrages me.  It blinds me to the actual value:  the ritual.  Through ritual, religion provides purpose by eliminating purpose.  The genius of Hemingway, Picasso, Matisse, Neruda was not the actuality of their creations, but the ability to commit to their ritual and give it direction.  One cannot expect everyone to possess this genius.  It may come as shock, but I am not a genius.  I can't commit to my passion.  Hell, I don't even know what my passion is.  Maybe I need a helping hand, someone to provide me with self-effacing ritual.  Maybe if I had a passion for Christ or Mohammed or Buddha, I would have eternity.  Not the 40 virgins in heaven type of eternity, but the eternity I could hold in my hand now like Matisse did his paintbrush.  Maybe religion was meant to give us passion and ritual and not dogma.  Maybe religion was meant to make us all forget about ourselves. 

And maybe we should think about this next time we use religion to create counterfeit pedestals from which to judge the "non-believers" and thus individuate ourselves that much more.

Why should I give a shit about eternity?

I've totally figured out immortality and I'm going to share it with you.

You're welcome America.

John Logan pointed it out in his new-ish play "Red" about Rothko and some random guy who bitch at each other about the nature of art, change, and death (excellent play).  In it the random guy talks about Matisse and how fierce the colors of his later paintings were despite the fact that he knew he was dying.  And when he was to ill to paint, he took some scissors and made collages.  He made collages until he died.  That is immortality.

It certainly would be wonderful if this blog were dipped in titanium and bolted to the White House steps for eternity.  But why should I give a shit about eternity?  I'll be dead.  I won't care who reads the immortalized yet under-recognized genius of this blog.  Nor will I care about the millions of lives this blog will save through it's brilliant insight into the human condition.  Again: I'll be dead.

At this moment, Matisse doesn't care about his paintings nor his fame.  Matisse's a sense of immortality came from passion and the consequent loss of self.  Painting wasn't about creating a personal image.  It wasn't about demarcating a past or impregnating a future.  It was about a ritual.  The dipping of a brush into paint, into canvas, into self.  The ritual eliminated self-consciousness.  Death, illness, body, identity were meaningless.  And when the ritual became impossible, he developed a new one.  Death meant nothing.  That is immortality: not that something is left behind, but that you don't care if it is or not.  Immortality is now.

Surrender

I have a friend in the hospital. He is also a physician. When he first arrived, there was significant concern that his symptoms indicated something monstrous (although it continues to be frightening, it is not as bad as they thought). He knew to be scared when he heard the overhead page calling the emergency team to treat his suspected condition. The physician overseeing his care saw his fear and placed a hand on his shoulder. She then said that they will take good care of him. This, he told me, meant the world to him.

As a physician, he knew that to navigate disease is daunting even by experts. Despite the constant push for data and protocol, the art of medicine - action guided by the inarticulable and seemingly imperceptible - is very much alive and well. (The first thing you learn as a physician is "sick" or "not sick" with just a look.) He knew that she had little power to direct his future, but still her words put him at ease.

It is difficult to accept when things are out of your control despite the fact that most everything is. His doctor knew this, so she took control for him. She made it so he did not have to act. He simply had to be (is this true authenticity?). I think, in the end, that is our primary jobs as physicians: to provide opportunities for surrender.

The doctor is ill at ease

When it comes to my mortality, I always think there is something to be done. Go to my doctor, get a test, take a pill.   I mistakenly believe that I have full power over the molecular direction of my body.

Here's what I do with your disease: I take objective measure of it; I evaluate what I may have control over and seize it; and I recognize what I have no control over and surrender to it. This is not to say I don't do everything in my power to help and protect you. What it means is I understand what power I have. I understand when I can't (and shouldn't) intervene.  I am a better doctor because I understand my limitations and the limitations of medical science. I suspect I'd be a "better" person (by better I mean more psychologically at ease) if I took the same approach to my family and myself. My control over my body is limited and there is not way around that.

In the beginning...

I'm scared shitless of death and disease. I say this as a practicing physician. Mortality is a bug up my ass that won't go away. Why am I so afraid? There are probably a million reasons but one stands out, mainly because it is an intriguing sob story that may lure you in if only out of pity.

My parents divorced when I was five. I am an only child so it had to be my fault. I must have done something heinously wrong to drive the wedge between my parents. I didn't know what that thing was, so everything I did or felt was subject to scrutiny. If I was to prevent them from the obvious next step - divorcing me - I had to change. Whatever concerns or emotions I had needed to be kept in check.

The problem was that I was a stressed out 5 year old who was sad as hell. I don't have the emotional maturity now at 35 to make sense out of my feelings. How could I possibly do so as a 5 year old? But as far as I could tell, I was being blamed for my emotions so I must have control of them. I didn't feel like I did, but I must given the catastrophic consequences (I was a bit dramatic as a kid) my emotions elicited. Although I was confused about my ability to control the health of my emotions, I was astute enough to realize that I definitely did not have control over the health of my body. When I got sick, I got sick. There was nothing I could do about it. So instead of being sad, I became sick. My body became my emotional dumping ground. Aches and pains in lieu of tears, fear of death in lieu of fear of abandonment.

Like all healthy American males, I chose not to address this quirk in my being and chose instead to pretend it did not exist. So it grew like the nasty emotional fungus it was into a near hypochondria. (Although an anesthesiologist and not a psychiatrist, I know enough about psychiatric diseases to hide behind technical definitions: I don't meet all the criteria to be considered a true hypochondriac. Of course, tell this to my pediatrician wife who will follow with eye rolling acrobatics.)

Today I have an enjoyable yet stressful job that resides in an enjoyable yet stressful life. Stress is an emotion we all have difficulty dealing with, both psychologically and physically. So, as you can imagine, when the pressure builds in my head, I displace it on my body. When I'm stressed, your disease becomes my disease. Whatever medical or surgical dilemma my patients face, I worry about having the same. And unfortunately, I take these "diseases" home with me.

It is time for me to face mortality; to understand it as much and to fear it as little as one can. It is time to be what I truly believe a doctor should be: a guide, leading patients through the seemingly conflicting meanings in objective disease and subjective illness. I have been doing my patients a disservice by not coming to terms with my own being and the inevitability of its demise.

So here it is. My journey to understanding my mortality. I'm not a religious man although I appreciate the philosophical aspects (not the dogmatic!) inherent in the major religions I have encountered (all seem to have as their goal a loss of self, the pinnacle in coming to terms with mortality). Nor am I a traditional scientist. I believe science to be a habit like religion with as much dogma and politics. I will primarily look to philosophy, the tradition that asks the same questions as religion, but uses the techniques of science. (It, of course, has its own bullshit too but I enjoy it's brand of bullshit.) But, in the end, what the hell do I know (that's the point isn't it?). I'll just figure it out along the way.