Many, many years ago I read “The Narrow Road to the Deep North”* (c. 1702) by the Japanese poet Basho. The way I remember it, it was a travel diary written in Haiku. It covered every part of his journey cross-country, from sore feet to squeaky bed frames, to the noise of neighbors and the quality of takeaway food… all in the required syllable way.
[As an aside, when my kids were little I used to call syllables ‘silly-bulls’ and would encourage the children to stand with their finger-horns on the sides of their head and stamp their feet on the ground as they sounded out how many syllables each word had: “sil-ly-bull” would be three snorty-stamps of a raging bull (that went nowhere but was fun to watch and drove the message home!)]
Recently, I was walking the dogs in a new area near the beach. The path had a ‘who knows where this goes’ quality to it (which I photographed) and then straightened up into a much clearer runway to the beach:
[Image source: me!]
Walking that path made me think of two poems.
The first was the old favorite (probably everyone’s): Robert Frost’s “The Road Not Taken” – even though in this instance, the path was not divided; no choice was to be made. It was more that the path had a ‘less-than traveled’ vibe about it.
The second poem was Basho’s Haikus which, in turn, made me think of the Zen notion of ‘the path’ – or ‘the middle way’.
I can’t claim to be an expert in this area, so apologies if I mess it up. In super-simplistic terms, my understanding is that the Buddha suggested that we all travel a metaphorical middle road; not too high, not too low, not too fast, not too slow. The way I remember it, he gave the metaphorical analogy of a lute’s strings; beautiful music can only be made when the string is tightened ‘just so’ – not too tight, not too loose.
This narrow road of the middle way, made me think of my healing journey. I often think (and write) of healing as being a slow process, a journey that may or may not reach a particular destination. More recently, I have been thinking this might not be helpful thinking. Why assume that healing is slow? Why can’t some forms of healing happen overnight?
I think I was trying to be ‘realistic’ so that I would not be disappointed if I woke up tomorrow feeling unwell. And I was probably reflecting the toing and froing that happens with the medical system. You can’t always see the specialist you need for weeks (or months), so in some ways, the progress rate is taken out of your hands.
But what if I was sending my migraine-pain-brain the narrative that getting well was a long way off. In other words; why not settle in and get comfortable with the discomfort??
What if instead of a bendy road to who knows where, I replaced the analogy with a straight line to where I want to be? What if I told my migraine-pain-brain; “that’s where we’re going, now let’s hustle!”
Who knows? But I’m going to try to reframe the narrative of my healing journey slightly, and remind myself that healing can happen – in big ways and small – one step at a time – for me, for you, tomorrow.
Take care taking care, Linda x
*PS – If the title “Narrow Road to the Deep North” sounds (un)familiar, it’s probably because Richard Flannigan used the same title for an award-winning novel in 2014, and that novel was just recently turned into a TV series… so… circles within circles… paths besides paths… hundreds of years old and recently new… yesterday, today… tomorrow…
The Mindful Migraine 
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