July 17, 2024

The Middle Way

My wife and I woke up feeling tired, but in good spirits. Today was the second to last day of her final medical rotation, something that excited us both. We drank our morning coffee together, and then she got dressed and headed off to work. After her car disappeared down the dirt road, I went back inside the house to write at my desk.

When I finished writing, I changed clothes and went for a walk into the woods. The trails were all clean, thanks to my wife, who used the leaf blower to remove all the debris that had gathered. While the morning sun still shaded the western side of the woods, the east side was quickly warming.

A breeze moved through the forest, which helped mask the sound of my movements, increasing my chances of seeing wildlife. When I arrived close to the feeding station, I saw two eastern gray squirrels running off, jumping onto separate trees, moving laterally around the trunk, hiding themselves.

While there wasn’t a lot of activity in the woods this morning, I appreciated the quiet time in nature. It was a worthwhile way to start my day. Along the trail, I saw several shriveled cherries from the surrounding wild cherry trees, smashed into the dirt. These cherries were notably larger than the ones I saw last week. When I was about to exit the grove, I stopped just inside the tree line, closed my eyes, and raised my chin up toward the wind. The temperature today was going to be hot, but at that moment, the grove felt pleasant, a feeling I wanted to hang on to throughout the day.

Work was busy with several impromptu meetings that took place during my normal lunchtime, causing me to miss lunch. It was an effective day, however, full of productive conversations, great ideas, and solid plans. Around midday, I saw Crystal, our US Postal Service delivery person, zip up to the house in her vintage Ford Crown Victoria. She dropped off a Nespresso order on my front doorstep, which made for a great ending to a good workday.

My wife got off work early, but she was going to drive into Wilson to get her fingerprints taken at the Wilson County Sheriff’s Office. She tried to do this earlier in the week, but they only took fingerprints on certain days. Today was one of those days. After getting printed, she stopped by Food Lion to pick up some groceries for the evening, including a large pork butt she bought for only seven dollars.

When she arrived home, we sat down and drank coffee together, trying out the new flavors we had ordered. As we caught up on our day, I got the sense that we were both relaxing our grip on life. Medical school required my wife to study and work harder than she ever had before. And this required support from me that also made life busier. Now, it finally felt like things were slowing to a normal pace.

This reminded me of what my Japanese Zen teacher called The Middle Way. This idea originated from a story of Siddhartha Gautama, a monk who had tried extreme practices of austerity based on severe physical denial. At the cusp of self-imposed starvation, a young girl kindly offered him a bowl of rice, which saved his life, leading him to cast away ideas of being too rigid in his practice.

Siddhartha heard a musician passing by in a boat where he sat by the river, talking about his stringed instrument. The musician was telling his student that if the instrument’s string was too loose, it wouldn’t play, but if it was too tight, then the string would break. Neither of these two extremes allowed the musician to play. The key was to remain in a state of balance. This became a meaningful metaphor for the middle way. School had wound us too tightly, and now, we were relaxing into a useful state of tension.

When I finished work, I found my wife in the backyard with the dogs. She told me she had fallen asleep for twenty minutes in the hammock and that she felt rested. I was almost out of half and half, so I made a quick run into Bailey to pick up a few items from the Piggly Wiggly.

I returned home a half hour later with half and half, heavy cream, limes, and a box of Neapolitan ice cream sandwiches. When I walked inside the front door, the smell of freshly baked snickerdoodle cookies assaulted my senses. On the counter, I found the cookies cooling on a tray. I grabbed a few and then went outside with my wife to relax.

The evening weather was amazing, and it felt cool and comfortable even though I was wearing blue jeans and a long-sleeved button-up shirt. The wind was blowing hard, making the tall pines sound like ocean waves hitting the beach at high tide. After finishing our cookies, we grabbed a couple of beers while diving into a deep but lighthearted conversation.

With our favorite country tunes playing in the background, we took time to share our feelings with each other, reconnecting after all the craziness of the past few days, months, and years. It was such a perfect night that I didn’t want to go back inside. The mosquitoes, however, took care of that sentiment. As we were walking back into the house, we spotted a tiny rabbit sitting out in the field. It was so small, no larger than a gerbil.

The time indoors didn’t kill the mood. My wife prepped the cooked pork butt and other goodies for tacos while I fried the corn tortillas into crispy shells. When we were done, we ate some of the most delicious pork tacos I had eaten in a long time.

After dinner, my wife went to take a bath while I cleaned the kitchen. Then, I took a shower and, just before bed, I sat down to make a few notes about the topics my wife and I discussed, which centered on politics in 2024. I condensed the conversation with three lamentable points. 

First, people could speak online without consequences, saying anything they wanted, no matter how rude, harmful, or untrue.

Second was that many modern politicians seemed to believe they could lead their group’s interests over those of all the other citizens. While political agendas had always varied, there used to be more of a sense that a leader had to take care of all the people, and not just their constituents. Now, politicians didn’t hesitate to implement their wants at the cost of other’s rights.

Last, politicians were free to spread misinformation openly without facing consequences. This allowed them to create a demand for their self-proclaimed solutions, solutions to the very problems they were insinuating. Unscrupulous leaders benefited from divisiveness. Finding solutions to society’s problems then, was unnecessary, and even counterproductive, to their goal of remaining in power.

I went to bed wondering what would happen in our country over the next year. While I had control of my property, the narcissism of many leaders troubled me, as well as their followers’ willful ignorance to follow them. Changes needed to be made, and I wondered what my role was in doing that.