How does one deal with and emerge from a crisis? That is the question that is weighing heavily on my mind this week. I normally control my stress through exercise. However, since recovering from knee surgery, I am using other outlets like reading. In an attempt to find answers, I am reading Joan Didion’s compelling memoir, “The Year of Magical Thinking.”
According to Didion, “Life Changes fast.”
“Life Changes in the instant.”
“You sit down to dinner and life as you know it ends.”
“The question of self-pity.”
Didion does not mince words. She gets right to the heart of the matter with laser precision, as her blunt words aptly describe the past months for me. Although I did not lose my husband to a heart attack or a daughter to an untimely and premature death, I had an alarming crisis – a family emergency.
As a result – my life as I knew it, radically changed in one instant. I now realize and appreciate that everything is in flux. I can’t control the events in my life and self pity is not an option at this time.
We all are unexempt from crisis, be it physical, emotional, social, artistic, intellectual or spiritual. At any age and time in life, crisis can strike, and catch you off guard. For example, this week I learned that a former beloved colleague died suddenly of a heart attack at 58. Last week I learned of a friend who was recently diagnosed with breast cancer at 47. What does this coming week hold for me I ask?
I ponder my own mortality. This recent phenomenon can be explained in part because of a family crisis, the premature death of my dear colleague, my upcoming fiftieth birthday, and my recent knee surgery, I am older it seems, so much older this year in particular.
This is the year that like Didion, because of crisis, my own thinking has temporarily become somewhat “magical,” or distorted. Irrational questions arise and haunt me, like: Could I have prevented this crisis, the colleague’s premature death, the friend’s illness, my turning 50, or my knee surgery?
I still don’t have quick and easy answers. I do know that there are no life guarantees that shield us from crisis. I also have come to recognize that there are times when one is struck by some kind of magical thinking. It allows us to make sense of our present world and get through a crisis! I am sure that I’ll be doing some kind of magical thinking for the time being. Thanks to Didion for putting it into words. (Reading is exercise for the mind.)
