Life tends toward life.

I don’t know when the words first appeared for me.  It has been within the last few years.  The idea, however, is a returning visitor to the old-school parlor in my mind.  So pleased to see you again.  Won’t you come in and sit for a while?

It is not a political statement; it is a simple truth.  Life tends toward life.

~~~

There is a woman in my favorite diner tonight.  She, Mrs. Cooper, has come to this restaurant most nights for eons, or so it seems.  Her long-time companion, Mr. Cooper, has not been here for several weeks.  Six recent bouts with pneumonia have turned into round-the-clock care for an uncontrolled heart arrhythmia complicated by leukemia.  He lived more than 80 years with heart issues only to have cancer come calling as he nears his ninth decade.

Mrs. Cooper still drives the sturdy American-model chariot that delivered the duo each night.  When we first met, he struggled to walk, but she had an easier time.  One car accident and one fall later, they were both down for the count.  Still they shuffled gingerly toward the diner’s double glass doors where a solid meal and the company of old friends awaited.

The simple and gracious Mrs. Cooper has carried the burdens of negotiating the roads, assisting Mr. Cooper to his walker from the car and even opening the restaurant door for him when we young whipper snappers missed our cues.  For her it is no burden.  This outing is their mainstay.

Tonight she is here for the first time in weeks.  The sweetest blue eyes are tired.  Still she smiles, and sparkles return to her kind eyes.

In spite of spending eight hours at hospice each day with her love, Mrs. Cooper insists you have to take things as they come – one little thing at a time.  “Charles has two good days and one bad.  Hospice doesn’t want to keep him, but they don’t know what to do with him.”

She sleeps until 11 each morning and takes second shift.  Tonight her son brought her in for a familiar meal at a place she can plug in with people who love her.  In spite of the very slow shuffle out after their meal, the visit seemed to recharge her.

Life goes on.

It is cliché but true.  For me it is an optimistic statement, not a pronouncement of drudgery – death and taxes will continue, things like that.  It means that life does and will continue, even when your best friend lies in a hospice facility unsure whether he has two days or two months.

I do not mean to make a false hero of Mrs. Cooper.  People often say, “I don’t know what I would do if that happened to me.” My experience tells me none of us knows, but when it happens, we darn sure figure it out. Onward we shuffle.

Mrs. Cooper carries on.  Life tends toward life.

~~~

National Public Radio delivered another nugget today, this time to my lunch-time drive in Dad’s old truck.  It seems it is finally alright to be an introvert.  There is nothing wrong with us – we simply have different gifts.  In fact, being “internal” gives us pause to reflect and exhibit a different kind of leadership influence in this world.  I don’t know about you, but I’m relieved.

The on-air conversation that followed pointed directly back to my current hypothesis.

You see, the anxiety sometimes exhibited by “shy” people in social situations is really an act of adaptation.  We could choose to shut down.  Instead, our beings seek ways to cope with our discomfort.  In short, we try to work it out.  The internal management of the situation leads to external cues of our unease.  The point of the radio host: we tend toward life, toward ways to make things work.

I have long believed our universal human failings – addictions, fears, destructive behaviors and thoughts – are not failings at all.  What if instead of seeing our flaws we opt for a positive spin?  What if the very things that slow us down were seen as things for which we should be grateful?  After all, we could have chosen to stop, to cease to exist amid the harshest of circumstances at times in our lives.  Instead we chose to adapt.  That thing that diminishes or challenges you or me is really a gift.  Like social anxiety for the introvert, it is a sign of great adaptation.  It is internal pressure release that keeps us from exploding – so we can make it through the rough patches – until we develop the skills we need to work things out.

Think of the thing that holds you back.  Everyone has one.  Now thank God for it.  Perhaps it kept you going.

~~~

This evening I checked the mail and found a surprise gift, a symbolic British care bear delivered by U.S. mail.

From waaay across the pond arrived a little square card, a homemade wonder of love.  Its sender is a friend.  Her update included a (stereotypically British) low-key reference to a recent mammogram, surgery, and three lumps.  While recovering she thought of me and wanted to send the gift of a few very well placed and generous words.  I have been sick, and she wanted to be sure I am okay.  (May I remind you of the surgery and three lumps.)

During a time of fear, stress and, finally, relief (the lumps are benign!), she sowed seeds of love and sprinkled them with the water of life for another soul.  From her own dark night came a bright shining light for me.  Wow.

You are a mini-Mrs.-Cooper, taking life one step, one challenge at a time while sharing a smile with a fellow restaurant patron in need of some sunshine.

Claire, you know I don’t venture out to that U.S. post office very often, but this on-line shout out is for you.

~~~

Last month I embraced a household enemy: weeds.  Rather than cursing them as I pull them each week, I decided to love them, to see them as individual works of art.

If you think about it, a weed will grow just about any place, especially a place you would not like to have a weed growing.  They survive because they figure it out; they tend toward life.  Even in the harshest of conditions, they flourish.  After all, it’s a plant’s job to flourish.

The brush that separates my back yard from the pond is annoying.  But it is doing its job, you know.  It was created to grow tall or wide to compete for sub-canopy sunlight.  Its job is to thrive.  I can tell you with certainty it is thriving.  I decided to change my ways and be grateful.

~~~

When I was a kid, I would form an idea and think on it for ages.  One of my favorite activities was to look at a single blade of grass.  I observed its form, the lines and detail.  Then I would imagine deeper – the complexity of its creation, the way it was put together, how its kind take in sunlight and how they drink.

Biology class a few years later blew my mind.  The human brain is still beyond my comprehension.  If a tree is a complex form (and it is!), the brain is triple-dog-dare amazing science.  Now connect it to the circulatory system.  My own pea brain just blew another fuse.

Take it up to 30,000 feet.  Literally take it there.  Look back at the earth.  Spend time gazing at the stars.  Just imagine all the wonder of the world.  We literally cannot take it all in.

In spite of us, in spite of our goofs, our misses, our own individual acts of adaptation, our world keeps on turning.  Life shuffles forward like Mr. and Mrs. Cooper who have adapted to a whole new way of being.  In time all wounds, all fractures, organizations and even governments heal.  They move on.

Try as we might to fight it or take it for granted, life tends toward life.  It is a positive given.

~~~

Before straying too far from biology, here is another thought.  Disease is a nasty word.  What is more foul than the words fever, scar and inflammation?  Yet each is an agent of healing.  What we consider “sickness” is really a force for the good.  Symptoms are often cleansing agents.  They seek to make us whole again, more pure.

To touch on the personal, autoimmune disease is difficult because it is unpredictable and complex.  Like cancer, however, it is really just one big bucket that contains many manifestations of a single process.  In this way it is basic.  By definition, all autoimmunity is the body’s (failed) attempt to fight a perceived foreign invader…only the body forgot to wear its glasses and accidentally fights itself.  It is internal friendly fire.  If you allow a new definition, it is the body’s way of protecting itself, and in that way is an act of defense.  It is a (well-intentioned but misled) friend.  Bless its heart.

My upbringing tells me to embrace this friend, to offer it grace and forgiveness in spite of its failings.

~~~

Life moves onward.  With or without us and many times in spite of us, it shuffles along.

Part of the lesson for me is to remember to be grateful.  Even our scars and fevers are gifts after all.

Beyond that there is a weightier lesson.  It is bigger than us – all of us.  We pollute, injure and insult the planet, and Mother Nature laughs.  The ice caps are melting, but I feel pretty confident that even after our earth is no longer suited for human inhabitants, the species will continue to adapt, to change in the face of the harshest of conditions.

It is all one great big, beautiful mystery.  And it is not stopping or missing a beat for any one of us.  We can work against it or fall in line behind the Coopers and try to learn from their grace.

Life is shuffling along.  Try to get in step.  It’s moving on either way.

© Mitzi Viola, 8/10/11