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Remember to Wake Up

Because of my bi-polar disorder, I take a number of medications that have the undesired side effect of making me sleepy more than my share of the day. I could easily and happily sleep 12 hours a night and get in a good two hour nap in the middle of the day to take the nod off my tilting brow. I used to sleep six hours a night, and restlessly at that, so this is a nice change. I find that I like sleep. Sleep is cosy. Sleep is seductive. Sleep has the potential for eating away the hours and minutes of my life if I am not careful. As a result, staying awake comes at something of a premium for me. I worship no small amount of caffeine. I take brisk walks. I work in cold environments. I work under 300 watt lamps. There is a Zen saying that says simply "Remember to Wake Up" and in my case I take it pretty seriously.

The saying, however, is meant to respond to another kind of sleepiness - the kind of sleepwalking we sometimes do when our lives are on auto pilot and we are not consciously living. This past year has been hall marked by some terrific major events in my life. I got married, twice, to the same man, in two different states on the same weekend. People came from across the country and around the globe to be at one or another of these very homespun affairs and let me tell you, my circle of friends and I did a lot of spinning. I got not one, but two new jobs, each with its own challenges. And David and I relocated back to Seattle, after a segue into community housing in Portland Oregon that turned out rather sadly, not as we had planned.

After making it through the first three quarters of a year, I found myself content to come home, snuggle up in my baby's arms, watch some television, eat some dinner, and then settle in for some more long winter snuggling. In fact, you would have been hard pressed to convince me that anything was more important than eating, sleeping and snuggling.

And for awhile, that was probably true. Scott Peck, best known for his book "The Road Less Travelled", wrote his recent book "In Search of Stones" about travelling in Great Britain. In it he says that America is a land of idolaters. Most obviously we place money and possessions before matters of spirit and community. But we also worship our work ethics, and then our physical ethics. We express guilt over food and exercise, not our treatment of each other. And in his last analysis, Peck says, we even idolised our romantic partners, substituting love of mate for love of God.

I am not the Christian that Peck is, so I tend to think in terms of God's work. What am I doing to make the world a better place to live in; what am I doing to repair some of the damage we've done by taking up tenancy on this blue green pearl? Mind you, I also think everyone is born with something that is their version of "God's work", something they are meant to do, without which we would all be poorer.

Which brings me, in a round about way, back to sleep walking. When I was young, I was separated from my mother and my brothers and didn't have much of a family after that. I was raised in a harsh, loveless environment from age 7 to 15. More than anything, it was the sense that I had a calling in the world that kept me going through those cold years. Well long about 16, I made a deal with God, so to speak. I had the audacity to dictate to the creator that I would do the work I was called to do, but God had to send me a family to love me for me to support me fully in that work. It was a fair deal, I thought. And, as bargaining with the eternal is one sided at best, I did not, in fact, find my one true love until I gave up on finding him and started doing the work I was called to do. To work on behalf of abused children and the environment and for a just economy, and for all those things I spent my life preparing to fight for. In fact, I was so entrenched into fighting the good fight, that when David showed up, I almost didn't pay him enough attention. I put off getting married, again and again. I had to be very disciplined about putting enough time and energy into our relationship. That was seven years ago.

It's been a long seven years. I started and maintained a small arts cooperative that takes on non-profit organisations as our primary clients. I've made a lot of progress, had some gut wrenching failures, and mostly pulled through with my integrity intact. Except for this new found belief that there is nothing more important than being curled up on the couch in a good snuggle.

Sleep walking. Or sleep schlumping, as the case may be. But there is a price. My snuggle bunny is depressed from too much snuggling. He is an artist who hasn't been doing enough drawing. And when he hasn't done enough art, he starts to whither. I don't notice it at first, but after awhile he becomes cranky, and if not cranky, then despondent. And I have to go through the painful process of pushing him away so that we can both go do the work we were born to do - and then come back together in the "in-between" times that are always too short, but well cherished.

In short, I have to give him up - again and again - in order to keep him.

There is another lesson in Zen. It says that suffering comes from trying to hold onto a moment for too long, not trusting that another moment, just as wonderful, will come again. It is one of the toughest things for me about adult life. It's tougher than getting up out of a comfortable bed and a sound sleep on a cold, rainy Seattle morning. I very consciously clear the dinner plates, kiss my David on the forehead, and tell him to go downstairs and draw. Not to worry about what time he's coming to bed, I will get along without him.

Then I will force myself to turn to the next task I have on my own list. Some piece of writing there is to do, or some work I need to do for the cooperative. I am lonelier. I have consciously chosen to be alone, even inside my marriage, rather than unconsciously choosing to have good company and a perfectly comforting winter evening.

It will take me some time to adjust, a few minutes to get over the immature pang of the heart wanting what it wants - and then I will settle into doing what I should. Because ultimately, I couldn't have it any other way, and the thought that I could is an illusion. To hang onto him too long, much as he loves me, is to lose him. I think this is the case with anything we try to sleepwalk our way through. Sleeping is all fine and good, in its time and place, but past its time and place and it gives you bedsores. I think sleepwalking through life gives us life sores in the areas of our lives which begin to atrophy for want of use.

And I made a deal with God that had a bill that's coming due. I've had my respite. It's time to get back to work. And let others be about theirs.

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