Assorted Ramblings, Musings and Rants!

Today I want to talk about several and various things... One is about why I meditate. There appeared recently an article in the Wall Street Journal (which for some reason I have been receiving free for the past 3-4 months, including an extra copy that I give to a friend) about the benefits of meditating as a counter to acute pain, as after surgery. There has been a lot of flap, of course, about the addictive properties of opioids like oxcontin and percocet and the like.

Meditation, a la Jon Kabat-Zinn school, has been shown over-abundantly to aleviate a number of maladies both physical, mental and emotional. But it's effectiveness with acute pain is still under investigation.

If meditation can reduce people's need for high-powered, addicting pain killers, that would be an excellent thing. I think it can and does. For me, meditation is one tool for relaxing. And when I'm relaxed, I'm better able to cope with whatever pain, discomfort or stress I'm experiencing.

The bible says something like, a relaxed attitude leads to a longer life. There's also an etched-in saying on one of the courthouse buildings in downtown Denver that says, alternate work with rest and live long.

Meditation teaches and allows one to be more present in the moment, to not be so concerned about past occurrences or future anxieties. And while focused and absorbed in the present, one can then accept not only the passing thoughts in one's mind, but accept them and the accompanying sensations without fighting them. Hence, the pain becomes more acceptable, less anxiety-producing and therefore more tolerable - whether it is chronic, acute or brief. Meditation has helped me become more accepting of myself.

Another significant thing to do is called “bring in flow”. This psychological phenomenon has one to get into an activity that is interesting and challenging and rivets one’s attention onto it. This has the benefit of removing one from one’s worries and ruminations and delivering one into a state of well-being, almost happiness.

Next point! Gordon Marino is a philosophy professor at St. Olaf College in Minnesota. He is editor of a book I picked up called Basic Writings of Existentialism. What is existentialism, you ask? Well, I’m only scratching the surface… and you’d probably need a few semesters in college to really get into it. I may be more dangerous than enlightening on the subject of existentialism, but it has its attraction.

But before we do any expounding on philosophy, let me say a few things about Mr. Marino that may be of interest. Marino wrote an article for the Boston Review a year or so ago. He’s a professor that specializes in Soren Kierkegaard, directing the Kierkegaard library at St. Olaf.

But what’s interesting and different about Marino that he talks about in this article is that he’s also a boxing instructor/coach, two radically opposite disciplines. He attempts to draw the two together in the Boston Review article, but while interesting, I don’t remember his bringing out much of a connection.

As for existentialism, the Danish philosopher Kierkegaard is usually considered the forerunner of this school of thought. While Kierkegaard was a Christian, albeit a rebellious one, many followers in the tradition were not. Friedrich Nietzsche, Jean-Paul Sartre, and Simone de Beauvoir were atheists. Fyodor Dostoevsky and Gabriel Marcel were believers, while Miguel de Unamuno y Jugo was a free-thinker and border-line Christian. Others like Albert Camus, Martin Heidegger and Ralph Ellison I’m not sure of their religious beliefs or lack thereof.

Ok, so what is existentialism, or what makes a thinker an existentialist? Actually, I think existentialism is both an attitude toward life and a way to live it – it’s not just some esoteric, way-out, impractical ivory tower philosophy.

Sartre is the most well-known proponent of it. He said that existence precedes essence… meaning that humans create their own lives by the choices we make, we’re not created in the image of a Creator (God) with our lives therefore being laid out for us beforehand in a pre-determined existence.

We, in that respect, “make ourselves”, our own existence creates who or what we are to become. We therefore have an incredible freedom, but also we are “doomed to be free”, because there is also a terrible responsibility that goes with that freedom. According to Sartre, every action that one takes will have an effect or consequence on every other human being.

Miguel de Unamuno wrote Saint Manuel Bueno, Martyr and The Tragic Sense of Life to explain his views on religion and life. He felt that his emotions led him to believe in God and an afterlife, but his thinking told him otherwise. In San Manuel, he also points out the need and responsibility of one who doesn’t believe to live with as if he did, with a grave responsibility to care for others.

Kierkegaard believed fervently, writing that the leap toward faith was the greatest risk and anxiety that one could experience. Toward the end of his short life, he rejected the orthodox church of Denmark and quit attending services. He said they were the antithesis of early New Testament Christianity – that simple Christianity of the early apostles is what we needed to live.

Nietzsche, of course, proclaimed the “death” of God and held up the image of a “super-man” as mankind’s savior. The German Nazis pointed to his writings and beliefs as sanctions for their myth of the all-powerful and supreme Aryan race, although Marino points out that this isn’t necessarily what Nietzsche himself was preaching.

Dostoevsky in some of his works, especially Notes from Underground, talks about the absurdity of life – which is a big existential point in that if life is not understandable, then we must CREATE our own individual meaning for our lives. We can’t rely on some external source to do that for us. Writers like Dostoevsky, Ellison and Franz Kafka then create scenarios that defy credibility, defy us to imagine ourselves in those situations and the authors then draw unexpected conclusions from them.

Simone de Beauvoir, friend, confidante, lover and intellectual equal to Sartre, often tried to expand and elucidate his thoughts. One of her greatest works was The Second Sex, a lengthy treatise on women and their roles in society from the very beginning. As an early feminist, de Beauvoir was interested in promoting new roles and positions for her sex since the old ones she saw as depreciating their dignity. Hence, the existential thing for women is to declare their freedom and create their new existences, lives and roles themselves, the way they saw fit, through their own choices and not through societal or male stereotyping and pressures.

Ok, moving on to the next thing I want to discuss. (I grant you that existentialism is a very involved philosophy and I hardly do it justice here.) But my next topic is the topic of PAIN! As everyone knows, pain hurts from everything from Ossarian’s military friend and officer, Major Pain, (in the book Catch 22 by Joseph Heller) to minor irritants and scrapes and bruises!!

But given that, what is to be done about it? Is pain always bad? How does one handle pain when it is perceived to be bad or destructive?

No stranger to pain myself, I have consulted a few books on the subject as well as a psychologist and several doctors. As mentioned above, meditation has been helpful, but also anything that relaxes my body, mind and emotions contributes to pain control and lessening my perception of its grip on my life. Granted, I’m talking more about chronic pain here.

The psychological aspects of chronic pain are interesting and very helpful. Self-hypnosis can be relaxing (it’s not some mumbo-jumbo, look into my eyes thing, but rather a deeper form of self-relaxation), also repeating certain phrases designed to soothe, and talking oneself through stressful situations with encouraging words. Other forms of relaxation include deep breathing and autogenics (repeating a soothing word or group of words many times over a number of days).

Deep breathing is intended to slow one’s breathing down and bring it into the abdominal region below the diaphram so all parts of the body, especially the painful area, receive much needed oxygen to rejuvenate wounded cells.

The autogenics phrases I like to repeat go: my --- is warm, my --- is heavy, my --- is letting go, substituting whatever body part in the ---. Warmth and heaviness (a feeling of sinking into the chair, mattress or floor) and letting go of any tension facilitate the relaxation process.

Stretching muscles in a way that feels good and doesn’t hurt also brings relief and oxygen to affected areas.

Lastly, snow!!! Yes, winter is approaching. White beauty all around can be breath taking after a storm. As one gets older, though, the cold weather is less enjoyable to one’s body – especially for sore joints and the like. But snow is always beautiful and winter in the Rocky Mountains is the most lovely, peaceful and quiet time of solitude there.

Que caiga la nieve (Spanish for: let the snow fall!)