You cannot save people, you can only love them.
-- Anaïs Nin
There is so much involved with our effort.
And, it so often ends up being such an entangling thing. Over time, we bounce back-and-forth on its continuum — too much effort, and then too little. Each a reaction to the other, rather than in response to something not so self-contained. Something outside us instructs us to do more and then to let go. Then to try again. And, to release again. Almost as into a long-term rhythm which instructs more about the influence upon us, than the which-is-it? dynamic confined to determining one or the other.
But, often it is our effort that both catalyzes and engages us. And, it is that engagement that brings us to new spaces and, thereby, new understandings. The effort isn't the thing, it is what carries us to the thing.
How much more abstraction do we have to endure here, you ask? What the heck are you talking about?
I listen to his breathing — is it there? Is it deepening? I'm looking for the opportunity to relax the degree of my attention. Otherwise, I must remain on high alert — what is happening? If something is, what does it mean? Is everything OK? Where is he regarding his meds? Are they working?
The hospital room door flies open — it is time for something else, for the hundredth time. What will this disrupt...yet again? Can't he just rest?
But, what if he rests too long, and then awakens to searing pain? What do I do then? What do I now, anticipating that possibility, before it happens?
He moved...OK, that was a normal move. He mutters something...what did he say? He was probably dreaming — did you hear me?, he asks. What did you say?
I need to stay awake, while he sleeps, so he can keep sleeping....
But, do I really?
Of course, I am dream-like describing parts of the all-nighters I've recently spent with Conner.
Such an irony — so much effort to achieve...calmness. Never quite successful, but ever the perceived goal.
And, in all that expending, both he and I working separately at a common or, at least, related thing. So aware of each other, and so not able to fully be.
I get attached to my effort, believing it is what is needed. It is what can make the difference for some short-term outcome, which impacts the long-term one. The effort entangles something in me, without my even knowing it. ...until I am not allowed to because something so relatively arbitrary imposes itself and I have to leave (visiting hours are over). But, as I do, the effect of my effort accuses me — I'm betraying (abandoning) something, someone...him.
But, I'm not really doing something quite like that am I. So, what is, after all, informing that particular way of framing it?
The process is, after all, more his than it is mine. But, I have somehow inadvertently absorbed it, as mine. I am only supporting his effort, even as he ends up with his own version of all the above (he is now putting his effort into work at a Rehab hospital in Indianapolis — and making good progress, in spite of the long road ahead of him).
I have to release what has accumulated right along side all my effort. I need to re-trust something besides it. I have to trust something in him, even more that what I'm trusting in myself. I have to trust that something even beyond him is dispensing something he needs, showing him what he has access to, teaching him how to use it. I have to trust a calmness I can't actually provide to gently provide what is needed right through the middle of the seemingly harshest of moments.
We know this kind of thing happens, but mostly for others, right? We don't know much about it ourselves, until it happens to us. We resist everything about it, but it does its work anyway, giving us what we need, even if we don't recognize that until much later — time is irrelevant to revelation.
None of this would be known, had I made no effort. It was necessary.
But, it was also not ultimately what was needed. It did, however, reveal what was. To me.
And will for my son.
And for that reason, I will continue to give my effort in every way I can...and, then, let go of it.
