How Would a Diagram of Life Look?
April 4, 2008
I’m sitting here with my Dunkin Donuts coffee and donut hole. What a treat, to take the day off and be sitting here with too-sweet, too-creamy, yummy coffee, a donut hole, and a beautiful vase of tulips! The world is at my feet Shazaaaaa!!!!
I’ve been thinking a lot recently about the concept of “healing”, and what it’s all about. I’ve been browsing through a book I have called The 12 Stages of Healing by Donald Epstein, founder of the Network Chiropractic principles that my chiropractor uses.
Today I had my 2-month chiropractic progress report, and she found that my head, which was 2 1/4″ out of alignment with my spine, had moved back to 1″. All of the other parameters in my neck, shoulders, and spine, were improved by various degress.
I’m fairly certain these improvements are not because of just the chiropractic work. I think everything that I’ve been doing with the tai chi, qigong, Alexander, meditation, writing, etc. have all contributed. I can sense the changes happening to me are deep, and that’s why I’ve been thinking and wondering about this concept of “healing”.
When I look back on my past, I can see that over the course of my life, I’ve been broken and then “healed” so many times: spiritually, physically, mentally. It’s been a sort of cycle that I’ve gone through time and time again. Something breaks, I go find something/someone to help, I finally find some sort of miracle “cure” or spiritual leader, become overly-elated and religions about the person/thing/concept, drift away for some reason, and the cycle starts again.
I were to diagram life, is that what it would look like: a series of peaks and valleys where, perhaps some peaks are larger than others and some valleys lower than others, and then, hopefully as we get older, the average peak increases and the average valley decreases, and then at some point in life, we end up with a fairly steady series of gradually undulating peaks and valleys around some steady state that’s relatively high?
If you could diagram life like that, then what sorts of things would trigger that gradual rise to some relatively steady state? Wealth and power? Peace? A sense of purpose and fulfillment? Love? Being loved? Giving love?
What sorts of things would cause that picture to not happen? Stress maybe? Death definitely. Disease and illness, probably.
The Story of My Journey to Free the Writer Within Me 
At some point when I was a teenager I realized that no matter where I am or how old I get or what is happening, it would always be here and now. So in the diagram of my life, I see it as a circle. At the center is the present moment. The various points of time and space I find myself in could be graphed according to how far away I am from right here. The further away, the more my perception becomes off-balance.
One side of the circle is the past, the other side is the future. Somewhere in between are my dreams and ambitions. None really exists except as reflections of the present. The peaks and valleys of my life have been irregular. There were points where I thought, “This is the worst thing that could happen, it could only get better.” or “Wow, this is the best moment of my life.” But I was wrong on both counts. There were no great moments or tragic ones, just experiences that I labeled at that time as the best or worst. What do I know? Was having a child at 20 the best or worst thing that could happen to me?
So I don’t think there is a time when things become more steady. I think there is a time when I stop rocking the boat and trust that it won’t sink to the bottom if I accept it as is.
Hi, Ned: That’s fascinating. After I posted that I wondered if other people would have diagrammed their lives the same way!