If the first 10 days of this month weren’t as faith-shattering for me as the 2018 experience I chronicle in the following excerpt from my book The Way of the Fool, they were still been incredibly challenging, pushing me to trust in the possibility of miracles to an extent I hadn't faced since some of the worst days I describe in my newest book, Pilgrimage: A Fool's Journey.
But when I woke up on 11/11 wondering whether I had somehow used up my lifetime quota of miracles, I recalled the story I share with you below, in particular the 11/11 dream that, in an instant back then, restored my injured faith. And I knew I had to share it with you.
By the way, it was that 11/11 dream that led to Step #12 of The Way of the Fool's 12½ "super-simple steps," designed to help you to "stop worrying about life and start living it." The name of the step? "Remember Who You Are."
It’s early — way too early — on a Monday morning, and I’m driving to Oregon Health Sciences University for an MRI. Until this moment, I haven’t been overly concerned about the test or about its possible results. But it’s easy, when you’re tired, hungry, uncaffeinated and on your way to a consequential cancer screening, to question your mortality.
Within an hour, however, my mortality no longer matters, my earlier concerns washed away in the flood of hopelessness and futility that overpowers me during the MRI’s thirty-five minutes of relentlessly unbearable discomfort.
As I lie motionless (I’m not allowed to move) in the noisy enclosure (even with earplugs and headphones, the sound is deafening), all I can do is compare what I’m feeling physically with the profound emotional discomfort of my thirty-five year Fool’s journey.
The parallels are disturbing, distressing and depressing. And by the time I drive off the OHSU campus, that journey feels as though it has been more foolish than Fool-ish, and I can’t help but wonder what the point of it all has been.
“I have spent the past decades doing my best to not repeat my mother’s mistakes,” I text a friend later that day, “and to live from a place of following my heart, not from a place of fear. I don’t want to come to the end of my life filled with so many regrets that, like her, I just give up. But here I am, wondering, like her, if it’s not that I was screwed over but that I screwed it all up.”
It has always seemed to me that my mother welcomed her cancer diagnosis as a way to escape a lifetime of regretted choices. If my MRI were to find a tumor, I don’t want to do likewise. Yet, I think I understand how she might have felt.
I stumble numbly through the next fifty hours in a fog of despair and self-pity, wondering what I will say in three weeks when I step onto the platform to deliver an inspirational talk at New Thought Center for Spiritual Living, let alone in three days when I am to lunch with my friend Isa who is in town to explore her own spiritually inspired move to Oregon.
This is the same friend who two weeks earlier said to me, “You’re the bravest person I know.” I feel like a fraud.
I have experienced other crises of faith over the years but none this profound, none this intense. I wonder if I will ever see the other side of it.
It is now Thursday morning and I’m on my way to meet Isa for lunch, still unsure what I will say to her. I glance at the clock. It’s 11:11.
It has been years since I have paid serious attention to the 11:11’s and 12:12’s that show up in my life. But when I see it now, I instantly recall a powerful dream from the night before.
In the dream, it’s 11:11 on November 11, Remembrance Day in my native Canada, and I suddenly remember that I forgot to pause for the traditional moment of silent remembrance.
The dream, I realize, is a call to remember who I am: not the Mark David Gerson who is flailing in despair, but a powerful being of light, a courageous journeyer traveling the Way of the Fool.
• Adapted from The Way of the Fool: How to Stop Worrying About Life and Start Living It... in 12½ Super-Simple Steps! © 2018, 2019 Mark David Gerson
Get The Way of the Fool and its sequel, The Way of the Imperfect Fool: How to Bust the Addiction to Perfection That’s Stifling Your Success...in 12½ Super-Simple Steps!, in paperback or ebook from your favorite online bookseller. Or get a copy signed to you from my website.
Signed books make great holiday gifts! Look for an inspiring, engaging and entertaining selection of fiction and nonfiction at www.markdavidgerson.com/books.
Photos:
#1 – At Portland's Common Grounds Coffeehouse, a few weeks after the incidents described in the excerpt;
#2 – My mother
