Sometimes a falling tree is just a falling tree

Admittedly, I may have been looking for something that wasn’t there when I told a friend what happened to me yesterday morning. At 7:30 I drove Tim out to the road to catch the school bus. The wind had been blowing in gusts all night, and there were a lot of branches and twigs littering the driveway. Then I saw something much bigger than a branch, a limb that looked practically the size of half a tree trunk, that had snapped partway off a tree and was tangled in some branches overhanging the driveway.

Clearly it could fall at any time, and I wondered when it would fall and on whom. So I worried about it for over an hour, and then I went out for a run. Just as I was running toward it, with the wind still gusting, I heard a cracking noise, and I watched as very gradually the limb splintered away from the trunk altogether and tumbled into the driveway, right across my path.

I tried to move it and was surprised to find I actually could shove it most of the way to the side, and then I called my husband, who was just getting ready to leave the house, and told him to bring work gloves when he headed out because he would probably be able to move it the rest of the way to the side of the driveway.

“Doesn’t that sound like a parable of some sort?” I asked my friend when I was done with the story. “How I worried for an hour, and then what I was worried about happened, and it wasn’t that difficult to deal with? Do you think that’s what it means: that the time you waste worrying about something could be better spent just figuring out what to do if it happens?”

“Either that, or if you see a tree that looks like it’s about to fall down, it probably will,” he replied sagely.

He was probably right. It was mere coincidence that the tree fell just as I was approaching it. I’m guilty sometimes of looking for too many meanings. I want the universe to inform me in easy and obvious ways: with parables, with allegories, with metaphors obvious as, well, a tree falling in the forest.

Sometimes, though, lessons get transmitted in just a few words, not in slowly unfolding anecdotes that involve wind gusts and peril. On Monday, the man from the septic system company paid us a visit. Our system needed some routine maintenance done, but he explained to me he couldn’t do it that day because the ice was too thick for what he needed to do.

He said it might be possible on Friday because warmer temperatures were forecasted for the latter half of the week. “Tomorrow is supposed to be really cold, though, before any thawing begins,” I said.

“It doesn’t even matter if tomorrow is cold,” he replied. “The sun will be shining and the days are getting longer, and those two things alone are making the snow melt.”

I know he was just talking about drilling into the septic system. I really do. But I kept repeating his words to myself. “The sun will be shining and the days are getting longer, and therefore the snow will melt.” We’ve had nearly two months now of regular heavy snowstorms, ever since the day after Christmas; hardly anyone has been talking about melting, but here was the septic company technician, reassuring me that winter would soon subside.

It’s been a long, cold, snowy, icy couple of months, and I really hope he’s right. I know he was referring only to ice, literal, hard and cold, and not to anything on a symbolic level. But still I found it comforting and insightful, just as from the falling tree I took the message that it was better to figure out what to do if something happened than worry that it would. The sun is shining; the days are growing longer. Maybe sometimes symbols are too easy to find if you look hard for them. But for whatever reason, both messages helped me. So I won’t stop looking.

Running, symptoms, and lessons from 2010

The idea of a long run midmorning on New Year’s Day was appealing. I thought about how good it would feel to get out into the fresh cool air and meditate on the year ahead: set goals for myself, imagine possible outcomes, focus on areas for improvement.

Instead, I found myself reflecting on the ways in which an unexpected situation – namely, the sense that I had an incipient sinus infection – served as a metaphor for the year that had just ended.

The sense that a sinus infection was about to take hold over me was unpleasant in itself but didn’t really put a damper on my wish to hit the six-mile route I’d already planned out in my mind as I indulged in a little sleeping-in that morning, in the wake of New Year’s Eve festivities.

And besides, I didn’t have a full-blown infection, just the approximate symptoms of one.

So I set out. But it wasn’t as much fun as I anticipated, because even though I was feeling generally fine, I couldn’t stop worrying. What if it got a lot worse? What if after a couple of miles I started to feel really uncomfortable? What if it turned into actual pain? What if I developed a fever?

But you don’t even have a sinus infection, I told myself. You just have symptoms. You’re probably absolutely fine. Besides, it’s a New Year’s Day, so just be brave. This isn’t like the middle of the week when you can call your doctor and ask her to prescribe antibiotics just in case things get worse. Sure, you could put in a call to the practice, but it’s closed for the holiday: you’d have to wait for a call back from the covering physician, and explain your symptoms, and figure out where and when you wanted to pick up the prescription…that’s way too complicated. Just keep running and stop worrying about it.

I reminded myself again that I didn’t have an infection, just symptoms.
And then I told myself that my worrying was ruining what was supposed to be a peaceful, meditative, six-mile run on a mild sunny New Year’s Day.

At that point I started to feel better. I stopped worrying and the symptoms lessened. I started to enjoy the sunshine, the scenery, the tranquility of having the road almost to myself on this holiday morning, the sight of a snowman in a front yard, a red-tailed hawk circling over a field, the aroma of baking from a house I passed.

Then, inevitably, I noticed how many similarities existed between my condition on that run and much of what had transpired in my life in 2010. It was almost as if the incipient sinus infection stood as a symbol for lessons I may or may not have assimilated, but certainly had plenty of opportunities to do so, throughout the previous twelve months.

For example:

• I nearly ruined my chance to enjoy what I was doing because I was too busy worrying about what might happen in the near future. Even though I was feeling fine, the prospect of hypothetical problems kept me from focusing on what was actually happening.

• At the same time, I tried to tell myself that what all signs pointed to couldn’t possibly be true. Although I had the three or four primary symptoms of a sinus infection, I kept telling myself I didn’t have one, rather than accepting the fact that most of the time, if enough signs are pointing in the same direction, chances are it’s an accurate reflection of the truth.

• And finally, there was the conclusive realization that it was just good sense to take precautionary measures. Even if I was bound and determined to will myself back to perfect health and refuse to admit the possibility that an infection might still be brewing, trying to reach the physician on call at my doctor’s office and asking for a prescription for antibiotics early in the day rather than waiting until the middle of the night was a sensible solution.

Inexplicably, by the end of the day I felt all better. The symptoms were gone. And that was great; I was delighted to have started the new year on such a promising note. But if I needed one last review of the lessons of 2010, I’d had that as well. Don’t worry so much. When irrefutable information presents itself, use that to draw logical conclusions. And pursue sensible measures to improve the chances of a positive outcome.

Illness as metaphor: a peculiar phenomenon indeed, but I paid attention. And I very much hope not to make any of the same mistakes in 2011. Here’s to wisdom. And health.