Answering the Unanswerable

When a patient comes to me with a very serious problem, one that causes him or her to ask questions about God and fate, rather than try to answer the unanswerable, I reply with a tool or three.

First I recommend meditation. Secondly, I refer them to Jon Kabat-Zinn’s book, “Full Catastrophe Living.” Jon Kabat-Zinn was able to document and describe the positive effects of meditation on the body in such a way that the western medical establishment took it and ran with it. Now the kind of mind-body programs that he pioneered are offered at most major hospitals---they are the third tool.

For those of you who may be curious about meditation, but not ready to read what is admittedly a weighty volume or join a program, below is a link to an interview with Kabat-Zinn that gives an idea of what it’s all about. The interview includes him reading a wonderful poem by Derek Walcott, see below.

http://www.onbeing.org/program/opening-our-lives/138

Love after Love

The time will come
when, with elation,
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror,
and each will smile at the other’s welcome,

and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you

all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,

the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.

 "Love after Love" from COLLECTED POEMS 1948-1984 by Derek Walcott. Copyright © 1986 by Derek Walcott. Reprinted by permission of Farrar, Straus and Giroux, LLC.