Don't Stop

Sometime close to Thanksgiving 2011, I was in the midst of caregiving hell and just beginning my version of what people like to call a spiritual journey. I remember having a conversation with a co-worker named Pao Lor, a likeable, hardworking, young family man of Hmong descent, who asked me what I was most thankful for.

"My pain," I told him, with all sincerity.

"You've got to be kidding me, Sparky," he said, astonished. "Why would you be thankful for that?"

"Because it is giving the greatest opportunity for spiritual growth," I said. 

Really, I said that. And I had a straight face. I had been listening to a ton of self-help and spiritual audiobooks, beginning with David Burns' book "Feeling Good," and then "The Power of Now" by Eckhart Tolle. By the time I was having this conversation with Pao, I'd been listening to the Tao Te Ching and had begun to piece together some sort of generic non-dual New Agey belief system from the hodgepodge of various Eastern philosophies I'd encountered.

I don't know why I suddenly remembered that conversation tonight, but it came after the song "Don't Stop" by Fleetwood Mac popped into my head while I was brushing my teeth. I've had Covid for the last week, in addition to recovering from dental implant surgery. Tonight, however, my pain was at a minimum, and I'm on the rebound from Covid, so the song kind of germinated a seed of hope, reminiscent of the Clinton inauguration party back in '93. The feeling that better days could actually be ahead.

That song has an older memory for me as well. I first heard it when I was around 11 years old and living with my father in Santa Monica. Without going into all the drama again, I'll simply say that my mindset at that time was one of a prisoner awaiting the end of my sentence. I read the book, Papillon, by Henri Charriere, about a prisoner who made multiple escapes from a penal colony in French Guiana while serving a life sentence for a crime he didn't commit. Like Papillon marking time during one of his long stretches in solitary, I had the days until I turned 18 penciled on the wall on the inside of my closet. 1,095 down, 2,920 to go.

During the summer days, I would ride my bike around the neighborhood listening to a transistor radio. Nothing fancy, I can't even remember what brand it was, just something cheap and plastic. But on it, I could listen to all the top 40 hits on local pop station 93 KHJ. "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald," "Stairway to Heaven," "Killer Queen" and a bunch of stuff that is now called Classic Rock or Oldies. There was also an oldie station, K-Earth 101, which played what I will always consider the real oldies, stuff from the 50s and early to mid 60s. Once you get into the acid rock era, I cease to consider them oldies, and things get more complicated to sort out.

Anyway, while riding around listening this little bicycle radio, I remember hearing the song "Don't Stop" by Fleetwood Mac. Something in the way they struck the note in the chorus, "It'll BEEE..better than before," rang my 11 year old heart like the fricken Liberty Bell. Oh yeah, it was the Bicentennial, and "Philadelphia Freedom" by Elton John was also in the charts around that time, another in my soundtrack of get me the fuck out of here songs. 

I know I'm digressing, but I haven't lost sight of the bike path. Not yet anyway. 

I was planning to run away to Mexico on that little white Gitano tenspeed of mine. As I listened to "Don't Stop," I got myself pumped up, doing laps around the block, up and down parking structures, trying to build my endurance for the big escape. I was Rocky doing the steps, jogging at 4AM, drinking raw eggs. 

(Umm, the 11-year-old me actually did go through a Rocky phase around that time, where I joined a local boxing gym and did some puny version of that whole trip, including the raw egg beverage--and yeah, it tasted really disgusting. This was in between my Westworld phase and my Jaws phase. Thank god I never had a Star Wars phase, cuzz that's just geeky.)

So, back to the moment I had in the bathroom, thinking of "Don't Stop" and Pao Lor's question about "what am I thankful for?" I can truly say, with a straight face--but only in retrospect, looking backward on what has made me the person that I am, with the memories and recollections that I possess: "MY PAIN."

So, thank you to all the players in my life who took the karmic hit and played the villains and petty tyrants in my little drama. To everyone who ever made my life hard: you are all beloved of me, and I treasure your gifts. The pain you inflicted cut the grooves of my record and gave my life purpose, direction, meaning and focus. Sure, I was screwed up psychologically for a while, but no worse than the kid who gets everything he wants and eats a diet of sugar and McDonald's every day. 

And the story is now mine to tell, to embellish as I see fit, as I cloud up the ether with my uniquely distorted perceptions, adding my little twist to the big kaleidoscopic lens of humanity's hazy, monocular vision. This is the voice you've given me, and I am...truly... <evil laugh>  grateful.