The Road to Nowhere

This week is National Suicide Prevention Week. Above is the suicide prevention video I produced a few weeks after my good friend Kevin threw himself in front of a train. He was 28. It is coming up to the first anniversary of that horrible day.

Guest Blog - Trying to Comprehend Loss

At age four, Nancy Rappaport's mother took her own life. Her just-released In Her Wake: A Child Psychiatrist Explores the Mystery of Her Mother's Suicide (Basic Books) explores the author's own coming to terms from both a personal and clinical perspective. Dr Rappaport is a child psychiatrist and assistant professor of psychiatry at Harvard.

This week is National Suicide Prevention Week. Following is a timely excerpt from Dr Rappaport's important new book:

When I was a resident, a psychiatrist I knew killed herself, leaving me bereft. The gossip was that she was infatuated with another doctor, and that he rejected her affections. Humiliated, she barricaded herself in her apartment and downed too many pills. On a frigid winter morning, I boarded a train to New York for the memorial service. In an austere stone chapel filled with blue flowers, the doctor’s mentor stood up to pay his respects and commended her for her conscientiousness. He noted with admiration that the day before she died, this diligent doctor had assessed ten new patients in the emergency room – an impressive feat. One by one, patients had filed into her office, closing the door behind them. She had asked the same diagnostic questions ten times, the equivalent of the physician taking a pulse, about sleeping at night, having trouble concentrating, hearing voices, mood changes, loss of appetite, plans to commit suicide. I wished that she had interrupted her “mental status examinations” long enough to get help for herself. I was saddened by her fragility despite her having tried to put up a good front. I was frightened: Now I had to relinquish the fantasy that if I learned this profession it would somehow protect me from the forlorn legacy of suicide. Even if you are proficient in this craft, it does not inoculate against the forcefulness of depression.

At the memorial, my medical colleagues speculated on her state of mind just before she died, offering armchair analyses of why she might have killed herself and wondering whether it was premeditated or a passion of the moment. In the rush for an explanation and with the disturbing sense that things are not always what they appear, they had a morbid fascination and dread that she was able to function with apparent ease professionally while struggling with private anguish. And yet there was also a heaviness – as if we had failed her.

Over the next few days, I was irritable, haunted by disturbing dreams and a sense of foreboding anxiety. The psychiatrist’s suicide evoked the loss of my mother. My therapist told me that when someone kills herself it is as if she puts her skeleton in your closet. I did not want this skeleton, and I resented the intrusion. I could not do this work if it felt futile, but in the aftermath of this doctor’s death, I did not want to think with my patients about the urge to end it all. I wished that I could bag groceries, do any other job that did not involve making sense of suffering and sharing the responsibility for keeping someone alive. But my therapist reassured me warmly, with the intimacy that comes from years of talking with each other, that it is normal to be shaken to the core when a colleague kills herself; it did not mean I was unstable or destined for a free fall. I have cultivated a determination and a skill to recover my balance when life has unexpected detours. I was depleted and needed to give myself some time to be with the people I love and who provide me solace. After a cross-country ski trip with Colin, awestruck by the pink sunset etched into the silhouette of the branches in the sky, painting valentine boxes in Cory’s class and resuming the outward semblance of routines in my life, I felt less overwhelmed. My sadness would run its course not because I would avoid the flood of feelings but because I could replenish without drifting too far from my center.

I always find myself incredulous that when someone commits suicide – when my mother took the overdose, when a teenager hangs himself in the closet, or a man shoots himself – this person truly wants to die. When I was younger I often dreamt that my mother and I were careening down a hill in a car out of control and in the back seat I was valiantly trying to reach down for the emergency brake to avert disaster. For the tortured souls who are intent on suicide, there is no territory beyond the present. The “mind tumble” means that they are not thinking clearly, and their judgment is clouded as they reach for pills or jump from a bridge. As I investigate my mother’s suicide, with the stealth of someone who wants to break the code, the inexplicable mystery of why this was the moment that she lost her determination, I return to her diary. I wish that I could have shown her the sunset that I found so comforting or that she could see her grandchildren, anything to have her hold on to a fighting spirit, to find the invincible shield of self-preservation. To develop the wisdom that premature death will not bring the peace that she ached for. In her diary she is wrestling with her demons, trying to stay alive, to anchor herself in her love for us. Yet that was not enough to keep her grounded in survival.

As I read from her diary, I weep for her, wanting to hold her, give solace….Understanding my mother’s suicide matters to me – as a doctor I spend my life trying to avert disaster, to offer a safe retreat to find strength to stay alive….I actually feel better when someone is talking to me, figuring out how to ease his pain. Some of what I have learned about suicide, depression, and substance abuse in general has helped to define, yet has also complicated, the mystery of why my mother killer herself, and it guides my assessment of how to help my patients not take the lethal next step.

Purchase In Her Wake on Amazon.

Guest Blog - A Day in the Life of a Bipolar Warrior

Another must-read from Elizabeth:

Three years ago I left a Ph.D program, and since then I’ve been working as an adjunct English instructor at local colleges. This turn in my life occurred for the same reason that most of my major upheavals have: I’m bipolar. I’d gone back to graduate school after a wild, Prozac-induced manic scotched the career I’d been working for a decade or so, ended my marriage, and threw me into a desperate three-and-a-half year custody battle to keep half-custody of my daughter. I persevered, but the experience involved me screaming at the walls many a late night and lots of pleading to a largely indifferent, uninformed justice system and a God Who was apparently busy elsewhere. My therapist couldn’t work with me because her notes were subpoenaed. My psychiatrist committed suicide. Friends abandoned me. Yet I endured somehow, and it was time to start over. I’d always wanted to be an English professor, and was accepted at a local Ph.D program toward that end.

For three semesters, things were going peachily, but then I had another major manic, then a year of severe depression, then another manic, then more severe depression, until I was sitting at my computer for five hours at a time every day in an attempt to write, and coming up with one ill-conceived sentence or two. My mind was so muddy and seeped in fear and guilt and suicidal ideations that I could barely hold a conversation, let alone write a dissertation. I found out that my dissertation adviser was cracking such hilarious jokes as “Elizabeth will be turning in her work. If she takes her meds.” What a punchline!

(Of course, most so-called normal people are led to assume that the psychiatric community has our disorders under control. For some of us, this is really true; for some, somewhat true. Not true at all for me and millions like me.)

After leaving the Ph.D program, I would have gone on disability if I could have, but as I’d been spending the previous ten years studying, working freelance so I could be there for my daughter, teaching part-time, and babysitting, that wasn’t a possibility. No disability for me. No health insurance. Life sucked. I despised myself for falling short and felt sorry for myself for the same reason. The world seemed like a nightmare, and I was terrified. Terrified by the people around me that thought my pain was a really amusing joke or a reason to villify me, or worse, dispense with me. But way more terrified that my mind kept generating horrific scenes of suicide, replaying the disastrous follies of my manics, berating me for the things I could not get myself to do. Terrified of my mind turning what used to be pleasant things—birdsong, tree branches swaying in the breeze—into demonstrations of shrieking, nefarious movements, nightmare.

I had to push that all aside as best I could. I had no choice but to keep going, keep working, and all I can say at this point is thank God. My work as an English instructor has saved me.

My work requires me to get up every morning and do the work. People are depending on me to teach them something worthwhile and to respond to their writing with sensitivity and good advice. I have to do what I can to make these students better writers and readers, and to do that I have to convince them that doing so will improve their chances and their lives. We have essays and short stories to discuss, which deal with the difficulties, complications, and joys of human experience. I have to motivate them to do exactly what I am having so much trouble doing in my own life: reading well, thinking carefully, and writing clearly.

I have a responsibility to these people. Some of them seem totally disaffected, just sitting there in a daze. Some have come from incredibly hard lives and dysfunctional schools. Some are trying to scratch their ways into a second career. It’s my job to try to encourage them to persevere, to spark their interest, to focus their attention. I need to get them to feel comfortable enough to ask questions and interested enough to want to join our discussions and do the work with integrity and hard work.

Something strange happens to me when I enter a classroom. I turn into someone else, or that person I am underneath the depression. For some reason, when I am with my students, my depression disappears, even if I’d been panicking on my drive to get to them, unable to recall what I’d planned to say and do. I manage to focus and come alive once I hit the classroom. If I’m still at a loss, I ask my students what they think and what they don’t understand. I listen carefully and try to respond the best way I know. I find myself having some answers. I find myself cracking jokes. The dire thoughts clear, and my mind regains some of its bounce and focus. Suddenly, I’m O.K.

I don’t know why that is, exactly. The showmanship of teaching can be quite heady, and my students don’t know that I’m coming to them from a life of confusion and despair. They do know, though, that I’m listening as much as talking, and that can mean the world to them. My students’ appreciation that I’m really trying to get concepts through is gratifying. When a young woman coming from a history of twenty ghetto foster homes says, “Wow, I had no idea people thought about things like this!”, I feel I’ve given her something. She certainly deserves it—it’s mind-boggling to me that she’s managed to even get to college, and it puts my life in perspective. Turning a classroom of people into a community is exciting. It’s an ego boost, to be sure. It’s fun. It’s communal. It’s everything I can’t manage without them.

Sometimes one of my students will disappear for a while and come back with a disability form. Bipolar. Depression. Panic attacks. I out myself to these people. I try to convince them to try, at least to continue the course and complete the work through an incomplete. I tell them about my first breakdown, when I was about their age. I say, “We aliens, we have to stick together.” And I hope that makes them feel less alone and better able to deal with it alll.

I’m not saying it’s been easy. For most of these past three years, I’ve gotten up at four or five in the morning so I’ll be over the worst of it—my daily intense three-hour anxiety-attack-mixed-in-with-panic-and-suicidal-ideations—by the time I hit the classroom. Adjunct college instructors (along with pre-school and substitute teachers) are the most poorly paid out there, with no job security and no benefits. But I can scrape together enough to keep a roof over my daughter’s and my own head. Resale shops are fun, and that’s where I get my clothes and even my art and various oddments. I don’t find them demeaning. I find them entertaining and surprising and useful. Whole grains and beans and seasonal vegetables are the best food for me, and they’re cheap. So far my 1999 model Beetle (dubbed “The Evil Clown Car”) is holding up, and when it fails, there’s always the bus.

John writes about tools for dealing with mentally illness that go way beyond the meds: sleeping well (if you can), eating well, talk therapy, support groups, exercise, meditation. My best tools are to force myself to communicate and to do things I believe in, and communicating and doing don’t come easy when I’m depressed. I’m lucky—I have a job where I actually get paid to do both, and a reality where I need to do that job.

Jobs that entail helping other people are out there. They are quite often underpaid, but they pay off handsomely in ways other than money. I don’t think I could have survived these last years if my work had been gauged by the amount of profit I made. I think office politics would have killed me, literally. But I also think that if I’d been able to get disability, that would have killed me also. I don’t think I’ve had it in me these last years to make a meaningful life without other people needing me to do so. Whatever the dynamics that make my job work for me, whether it’s more or less ego boost or more or less altruism (I could, after all, do a crappy, dispirited job and still look O.K. on paper), I do know that my attempts to help other people have been at least part of my saving grace.

Even if you cannot hold down a regular job, or if you need to keep a job that doesn’t exactly make you feel like you’re improving the lot of humanity, seek out ways to be of good use. Volunteer officially, or just listen carefully to other people’s problems and offer understanding and a hug. Help out when you can. If, say, your job is to ring up sales at a gas station, smile and be kind to everybody. Many of your customers will smille and be kind to you in turn. It’s infectious. If you practice empathy toward others, even in the littlest ways, you’ll find yourself stepping out of your own pain. You’ll find yourself feeling connected instead of alienated. All our great spiritual leaders have taught the essential truth that taking good care of others is the essential way to happiness. If you suffer from mental illness, doing for others might just save your life.

When I First Knew I Was Different

I wrote a slightly longer version of this back in 1999, as part of my coming to terms with my then-recent diagnosis of bipolar. It was one of the original articles that appeared when mcmanweb debuted in late 2000.

I always knew I was different, but the day I knew that I knew came in the fall of 1956 when I was six going on seven. The big event of that time from my perspective - and ultimately the world's - was the Coming of Elvis, but it wasn't until the release of "Hound Dog" that I was aware the cosmic order was no longer the same.

I knew it then and there with all the sagacity of one uncorrupted by life experience.

The world that fall had irrevocably altered - a tectonic plate shift - a movement of the heavens and the earth that had the ground and everything on it vibrating to a new frequency. Nothing would ever be the same again.

History, of course, would prove me right.

We had just moved into a new house in a new neighborhood cleared out of woods and old pasture land in central Connecticut. I didn't know it then, nor did the rest of my family, but we were making history every bit as significant as the Coming of Elvis.

In moving out of their old Irish Catholic neighborhoods back in Springfield, Massachusetts - actually a series of moves over eight or nine years - my parents, along with the millions of others of their generation, had taken us to the uncharted shores of a brave new world, an immigration every bit as significant as the ones associated with the Potato Famine and Ellis Island.

And there to welcome us were our new neighbors - Italians, Jews, a lone Greek family, WASPs, Germans, Poles, and - oh yeh - some Irish. What was missing, of course, were blacks, Hispanics, and Asians, but that would be Stage Two. In Stage One, first whites had to learn to live together. We were integrating. We were never just white.

It was then and there, in my new neighborhood, just as white America was in the process of becoming one, that I realized I was different.

Had this been 1955 instead of 1956, I might have passed for normal. But "Hound Dog" blew my cover. I couldn't just splash through the mud or climb trees or kick through smoldering piles of raked leaves or jump off half-finished garage roofs into conical piles of sand like the rest of the kids. No, I had to stop and savor the moment as I gyrated my body and yelled out, "Y'aint nothin' but a hound dog!" at the top of my lungs.

There was something about the song that put me in a different place, that temporarily stopped the sun and suspended gravity and lifted me into a different realm. The shrinks have a name for it. Peak experience, they call it.

My new and mostly older buddies were not slow to recognize the amusement value in my antics, particularly when yet a new Elvis song came to my notice, "Hard Headed Woman".

So it happened that one day we headed home from a far-flung corner of our great vast adventure playground, needing only to cross an intervening bull pasture to get back in time for the "Spin and Marty" episodes on "Mickey Mouse". Or maybe it was something completely different like "American Bandstand," but "Spin and Marty" with its Triple-R Ranch and kids doing dangerous things on four-legged animals seems altogether more appropriate to a story involving a six-year old Elvis fan and a herd of bulls. Probably they were just steers.

Then one my friends - Cartman or Butters or Kyle or whoever - happened to mention what a pathetic lot these particular creatures were. No horns, just munching on grass, lying down, waiting to become steaks, too lazy to even chase the flies away.

You could see where this conversation was heading. Next thing, I was swimming with the bulls. Without giving the matter a second thought, I straddled one leg in the air over one reclining beast. I thought this would impress my friends, but no, half of them were gesturing me to sit while the others were gyrating to "Hard Headed Woman."

I shifted my weight and the leg came down. Instantly the horizon dramatically changed. I was high above it and the scenery was moving. I didn't wait to see how this would turn out. I jumped off, but without kicking off. Somehow, I willed myself into the air, and when gravity reasserted itself I landed like a cat, found my bearings, then dived through a nearby electric fence with a precision and athleticism that would have put Jim Brown, the best running back in all history, to shame.

Chalk one up to - drumroll please - the amygdala and its fight or flight supporting cast. Mine checked out just fine.

My first thought - once the luxury of thought returned - was that I had somehow not lived up to the faith my friends had in me. I had bailed out, aborted the mission in mid-flight. I was nothing more than a scaredy cat, which is the worst fate that can possibly befall a kid, particularly one looking for approval from his elders. I gathered myself on the ground, trying to hide my shame, then stood up to face the music.

But instead of the barrage of ridicule that I expected, I gazed up into expressions of amazement and disbelief, the kind of looks that might have greeted me had I just emerged from a pool of crocodiles. In other words there was no way my older buddies were going to do what I did, not in a million years, not even to show me how easy it was.

How could I be so stupid? I suddenly realized, feeling my face go red. What idiotic thing would I do next? Stick my hand in a running lawn mower? Suppose something had gone wrong? Suppose I had got these bulls really angry? Suppose I had set off a stampede?

Bulls on the patio, bulls in the flower beds, bulls crashing down houses, and trampling babies, here in this brave new world that our parents had only just created. Maybe I should just start running right now.

But it was the prospect of school the next day that frightened me the most, for here I knew with absolute certainty what fate had in store. Humiliation before my peers, forever branded as the moron too stupid to stay away from danger. Even the kindergartners would show me no mercy.

But none of my friends were laughing. If I were red, then they were pale. I was safe, I realized, much to my infinite relief. Turning me in, after all, would only draw attention to themselves, brand them as accessories for egging me on, expose them to the same ridicule, get them into even worse trouble than me. This was serious business, and it was all taking place on the unspoken level.

It never happened, simple as that. That was the silent pact we made. We wouldn't talk about it, even amongst ourselves. We wouldn't even think about it. It was as if we had the power to take those last few minutes back. By the time I got home it was even a secret from me.

But one thing had irrevocably changed. I knew that I was different, that the momentary terror I had felt on that back of that bull had been nothing compared to that fear in my gut over being singled out for ridicule for the rest of my life. Sure, it didn't eventuate, but the warning had been sounded. I had been given a little foretaste.

In the meantime, I still had a few carefree years ahead of me. Elvis would later go into the Army, and when he came out the world would once again be different. And so would he. And so would I.

It's Official: She's Batty

My little furball now has a name: Bathsheba AKA Batty.

Kill the fatted calf, break out the best champagne, summon the musicians and dancing girls, let church bells ring throughout the land - we are going to have a celebration.

Celebration-shmelabration, Batty is telling me. Drop that extra morsel of salmon in my bowl right now and be quick about it.

Batty or Jazzy - Decisions, Decisions

As you are aware by now, this gorgeous little furball promenaded into my life and decided to keep me. In the process of falling under her spell, I ceded to her dominion of the premises. Thus, only an enchantress name or something regal will do. A friend suggested Sheba, which I modified to Bathsheba, the Bible babe responsible for God visiting calamity upon the House of David. And, of course, I could call her, Batty, for short.

I was all set to go with Bathsheba/Batty when Jen wrote in with the suggestion of Jasmine/Jazzy. The eight-year-old kid next door simply loved that recommendation. So, here I am, four or five days later, still agonizing.

"Poop or get off the litter box," my nameless wonder keeps telling me.

So what is it: Batty or Jazzy?

Readers, I appeal to you. Help!!!

Thanks to all of you thus far. Please respond via posting a comment ...

Latest Poll Results - It's Official: We're Intuitive

"How intuitive are you?" I asked you in a poll I conducted during the month of August. There were seven possible answers - ranging from "psychic" to "sorry," and you were allowed to fill in as many as you like. One hundred fifty of you came up with 316 answers, or two each, presumably not ones that represented polar opposites.

The extremes provide some indication of where you stand. Nearly one in four of you (35, 23%) answered that you were "borderline or full-on psychic, or at least it seems that way." In contrast, less than one in ten (13, 8%) responded with, "Sorry, I'm totally rational and logical."

I highly doubt that we would find so many with psychic tendencies in the general population. I also suspect that a lot less of you would share this kind of information with your psychiatrist. We've all had experiences that we can only describe as uncanny and inexplicable. Some of us have them with greater regularity.

Moving on to straight-up intuition: Four in ten of you (64, 42%) indicated that "my thoughts and ideas seem to come out of nowhere" while more than half (83, 55%) reported that "I often read people and situations like a book." This represents our bipolar advantage - creativity and seemingly otherworldly mental abilities - as well as our curse - racing thoughts and distractibility.

I would have expected that "I can put two and two together and come up with five" to have yielded a similar result to the previous two answers, but only one out of four of you (38, 25%) said yes to this. In retrospect, it wasn't exactly clear what I was driving at. What I was looking for was insight into how we connect the dots to arrive at conclusions. I suspect that many more of us possess the type of prescience that stuns casual observers. By the same token, we can come across as fools for giving undue weight to the first thing that happens to pop into our heads.

The most intriguing response may be those one in five of you (32, 21%) who reported that "I have heightened awareness in areas of my life that require my attention, such as my job, my hobbies, or raising kids, but rarely elsewhere." This suggests that although some of us may be born more gifted than others, we can improve with practice. Indeed, the military is onto this. A recent article in the New York Times describes how bomb squads in Iraq are trained to use their sixth sense to sniff out ambushes.

One third of you (51, 34%) report, "I get occasional flashes of insight, but I see myself as rational and logical." If you fall into this category, along with the eight percent who see themselves as totally rational, please don't feel like you're missing out on anything. Being grounded confers enormous advantages.

So what is intuition all about? In a recent piece on BipolarConnect, I observed:

Investigations into creativity and intuition point to variations in the way the brain processes information. In either endeavor, the mind arrives at conclusions that cannot be explained as the product of rational and linear thinking.

One way of looking at it is that in the creative and/or intuitive mind, the brain may be inefficient at filtering out so-called irrelevant inputs. Strongly allied to this notion is the idea that creative/intuitive brains may be frighteningly efficient at connecting these so-called irrelevant inputs into something transcendentally relevant.

I also noted in my BipolarConnect piece that science tends to view creativity and intuition as normal behavior writ large. Our brains, after all, are wired to function in novel situations. But there also seems to be a fine line where states of hyper-reality cross over into breaks from reality. This may account for why intuition, creativity, and bipolar (and other mental ills) seem to come packaged in the same brain.

Finally, I cautioned that the left brain is there for a reason. Our intuition may offer an enormous advantage, but only our ability to think rationally gives direction and purpose to this mysterious gift.

Further reading:

From Knowledge Is Necessity

The Mystery of Creativity

Madness and Creativity - What's the Connection?

Trick Question: Vincent Van Gogh

From BipolarConnect

Intuition, the Paranomal, and Bipolar - Any Connection?

Intuition and Bipolar - Is There a Connection?

Question of the Week - Uncanny Moments

From mcmanweb:

Madly Creative

Clouds

This is an extremely rare sight where I live - clouds. I'm 3,500 feet up in the mountains 40 miles east of San Diego. Yesterday, for the first time in months, it actually rained. Not only that, it poured. For virtually the whole day, we experienced thunder showers. Not the drive-by variety that I'm used to on the east coast. These babies literally swirled around our mountain the entire day, dropping in for return visits.

Finally, as the sun was dipping into the horizon, I was able to get out for a walk. I shot this through my iPhone, on the street where I live, about a quarter mile from my house, looking down into the valley below.

Me and Julia - Now a Major Motion Picture

Those who have seen the movie, "Julie and Julia," are already comparing this pivotal scene to such classics as "Casablanca" and "Gone with the Wind." As for me, "My Fair Lady" springs instantly to mind.

"Julie and Julia" is based on a book of the same name by Julie Powell and Julia Child's "My Life in France."

The late Julia Child, of course, is the iconic author of the ground-breaking "The Art of French Cooking," and the larger-than-life host of a series of wildly-successful TV programs that ran from the 60s through the 90s.

But, as we all know, Julia Child came into gourmet cooking late in life and had to be guided along the way. That's where I come in. Here I am in the movie, playing myself, in a scene with Meryl Streep as Julia Child. Throughout the movie, Julia Child is Eliza Doolittle to my Professor Harold Higgins. Trust me, in the beginning I couldn't even get Julia to boil water.

As you will recall, I made a bet with a friend that I could pass Julia off as a gourmet French chef who I would get signed to a book deal and TV contract. After months of frustration, I was finally ready to try out Julia in public. Well, you know the result. Julia didn't know a whisk from an egg beater. The Gâteau Victoire au Chocolat Mousseline that she is making (pictured here) came out with the taste and texture of a Michelin tire.

The wrong kind of Michelin rating, take my word for it. All she had to do was follow my recipe.

The rest, of course, is history. I quit in frustration and was never heard from again while Julia went on to become an international celebrity. Julia always credited me for her success, citing her determination to spite me as the motivation for her to keep going.

Coming to Terms

In Flying Home, I discussed settling into my new rural environment in southern CA. To pick up where I left off:

A thought-provoking Zen parable goes like this:

A man encountered a tiger in a field. He attempted to escape by lowering himself down a precipice. He looked down and, to his horror, saw more tigers looking up, anticipating their next meal. He looked up and spotted two mice above gnawing on the vine he was clinging to.

Oh, crap.

Then, looking to his right, he sighted a strawberry growing from the cliff face. Reaching over, he grabbed the morsel and popped it into his mouth.

“Mmmm!” he thought. “Delicious!”

***

My own translation: Enjoy the peanut butter.

By now I had all my stuff out of its boxes, and McMan International back up and running, which is my way of saying I had my desktop computer all plugged in and wired for internet. I had an email newsletter to get out, my first from my new world headquarters. I anticipated going full blast into the evening, but things went off without a hitch and I was unexpectedly through at about 2:30 in the afternoon.

Time to unwind with a walk. The winter sun was already low over the peaks behind me, and I was in the shadows, but the valley below me and the peaks in the distance were bathed in brilliant light.

I stopped in at the local coffee shop for a coffee and muffin to go. Shelley the proprietor heated my muffin for me and sliced it into tasty morsels. Soon, I was in the sun on the valley floor. The open space before me allowed my mind to breathe. Not too far off, peaks and rock formations rose from the valley like great cathedrals. I sipped my coffee, and munched on my muffin morsels, savoring the moment.

On my way back, I stopped at the general store, which adjoins the post office. Yes, we even have our own zip code. It was to be a dogs and beans night for me. Back outside, the sun had set behind the peaks and the temperature was dropping fast. I was back into my own shit now, still reeling from recent events, facing financial ruin, uncertain about my future, wondering how the hell I would ever get my life back together.

I hurried my pace, anxious to get home - home? - only to stop dead in my tracks. I looked right. The entire valley below was now in the shadows, as were the peaks and rock formations. But in the distance, a steep summit caught what was left of the sun full broadside. The mountain appeared to be radiating from the inside, a lustrous rosy glow that sharply contrasted with the cool hues of the darkened landscape.

Delicious!

Thank you, God, I found myself saying. I was experiencing the perfect moment, in the moment, what they call a Zen moment, fully aware, in the present. Tomorrow I could very well fall to pieces. But right now was a gift. Life happens here, right now. If you're second-guessing your past or fretting about your future, you're missing out.

The moment lasted maybe five seconds. Then I was back inside my own head, my own shit. But it wasn't the exact same shit inside the same head I returned to. I was back in my past, but it was one I could come to terms with. I was back in my future, but it was one I could face with hope.

Something similar occurred to me more than 30 years before, only back then it happened with the throttle wide open headed over the edge of a cliff.

We can all recall our exceptionally aware moments. Unfortunately, they tend to occur in highly-stressful and often life-threatening situations, such as skidding on glare ice at 60 MPH. This is when our fight or flight response takes over. The frontal lobes go off-line. We literally stop thinking as the faster-processing and more primitive regions of the brain (think amygdala) assume executive control.

Fight or flight is normally associated with an over-reaction, but here we are talking about a rare mental state that can only be described as calm awareness. If we had time to think about the dire straights we were in, we would probably panic. Instead, barring bad luck, we successfully avoid wrapping our vehicle around a tree. On one hand, the crisis is over in a micro-second. On the other, it’s as if time were slowed down.

There is a stretch of the Route 101 Coastal Highway in Marin County north of San Francisco that has probably washed into the Pacific by now. Gerald Ford was President and I had hair. I leaned my bike into the curves of the road, first one way, then the other, speeding up on the straightaways and gearing down on the hairpins perched high above the Pacific, my ears ringing with the roar of the waves crashing against the rocks below.

I was just leaning in for another sharp turn when I came upon some rocks that had worked their way loose from the hills above. There was no time to think. I swerved to avoid the obstacle and brought the bike around 180 degrees, but it was going backward toward the ocean on its own momentum. I felt the sickening sensation of the back wheel leaving the shoulder and losing traction in the soft earth behind. For a brief fleeting instant I had the sensation of being suspended in midair, like Wile E Coyote in those Roadrunner cartoons. Then the bike found purchase, jerked forward, and stalled on the shoulder.

I turned off the ignition, wheeled my bike to a safe place, and took stock. Something had shifted in me in those two or three seconds. Whatever had been holding me back before was holding me back no longer.

Within days, my life was on a new trajectory that would find me in New Zealand, attending law school, married, with a kid on the way. Now, here I was, decades later, in rural southern California. Healing happens, but don't expect to stay in the same place. There was no going back, not to New Jersey, not to my old sense of self. At the same time, I felt a sense of home. I was no longer on the run. I was here to stay. The land had heard my request. It was talking to me.