My New One Year Birthday

“Everything will be better when  ____________!”

What’s your fill in the blank?

It seems like everybody I talk to these days has something they are seeking which they feel will be the magical elixir to heal all the things that ail them. It doesn’t matter how spectacular somebody’s life may appear from the outside looking in, I can assure you that pretty much everyone has something that they think is missing from their life which will instantly make things better. 

~ Some of you who are single may be seeking a soul partner to share the road of life.

~ Many people I know, myself included, feel like things would be easier with more financial security. 

~ Perhaps you’re comfortable with your finances and have a good life partner, but you’re not on the vocational path that you’ve dreamed about all your life. Your desire to do something new has you looking for the right time to change your career path or the right job to awaken a new zeal for life. 

~ Or maybe you love your job and you make great money, but you never seem to have enough time for yourself?

The possibilities are literally endless. As humans we can come up with an infinite number of reasons as to why our lives are not what we expected them to be. In fact I seem to be able to come up with new reasons every single day.

While I would certainly never suggest that people shouldn’t dream about all the things that they could possibly desire, it can get tricky when we constantly feel like our lives are “less than” because of something, someone or some situation that we have yet to create within our lives. 

In reality, there is only one way to break the never ending cycle of wanting for more and waiting for your life circumstances to change. There is one sure fire way to stop waiting for that “fill in the blank” moment to finally arrive. The way to break the cycle is to be grateful for what you already have and to be fully present in ALL the moments in your life: the joyful moments, the uncomfortable moments and even the most difficult moments. All of the moments of life need and deserve your full attention and gratitude. 

I have spent a lifetime seeking answers to the more existential questions of life. I’ve spent the last year specifically experiencing unexpected and at times excruciating opportunities for contemplation and personal growth. As I sit here today though, I think I’m finally starting to understand that there is nothing that can “fill in that blank” for me that I don’t already possess. By that I mean that as long as I have life itself… I already have everything. 

It was a year ago today that I came closer to losing that life than I even realized. Many of you remember my slip and fall last January while skating at Warren Park Ice Rink just a few miles from my home in Chicago. On the surface of it all it appeared that I had a moderate concussion as well as a laceration along the occipital rim on the back of my skull. The emergency care team that treated me originally put about a dozen staples in the back of my head and sent me home without so much as an x-ray, much less an MRI, brain scan or any additional observation. 

When I got home from the hospital, I recapped the day’s events for my wife Christiana and her parents who were kind enough to come down and help watch Emma in case Christiana needed to join me at the hospital. I was surprised at how composed I felt in that moment, but in retrospect it must have just been shock and disorientation. Within an hour of returning home I was in bed in the dark with my head gingerly propped up on pillows because everything just felt so uncomfortable and intense. I remember that I wanted nothing other than to totally shut down, check out and go within. 

About an hour after my return home, my wife Christiana called back to the hospital because she observed some inconsistencies in my behavior, not to mention the fact that my head was still bleeding. Despite the fact that all I wanted to do was lie in bed and go to sleep, at Christiana’s strong suggestion I went back for additional tests which kept me at the hospital for the majority of the night. 

The next morning as I sat in my living room and gazed down at my two hospital wristbands, one on my right wrist for my original visit via ambulance and one on my left wrist for my second admission later that same night, I couldn’t help but think that I somehow escaped a potentially catastrophic outcome.

For the next few weeks I rehabbed from my injury without truly understanding the magnitude of what I had just been through. Post concussion syndrome left me with decreased executive functioning skills, headaches, periods of confusion and some wicked vertigo. A full two months after the injury I finally attempted to do some yoga at home and I actually wound up falling over during triangle pose due to the severe vertigo. 

About three months after my injury, after a well timed lunch with my original yoga guru Gabriel Halpern, I decided to join a nearby yoga studio and start taking classes as a beginner. I made no mention of the fact that I had been practicing and teaching yoga for almost 30 years. I just told the teachers at the studio that I was recovering from a traumatic brain injury and that I was trying to rebuild my balance from the ground up. The chance to approach something familiar with a complete beginner's mindset was a remarkable gift that I in many ways am still unwrapping. 

I started going to class three or four days a week and little by little, I relearned things on the mat that I had been taking for granted for decades. Down Dog. Tree Pose. Warrior One. Even the most basic poses (asana) felt like I had never done them before. While the physical practice was slow to return, the mental aspects of yoga had never left me. In fact, for the entire year before my injury I had been spending 1 to 2 hours in meditation and doing deep spiritual healing work on myself on a daily basis. That year of deep meditation had led me to the place where I felt called to try on sobriety on a more permanent basis for the first time in November of 2021. Fortunately I was two full months into my trial sobriety before my head injury even happened, which in my mind was critical to my survival for a multitude of reasons which I will elaborate on at some point down the road. 

Through my physical yoga practice and my continued deep dive into my spiritual path, I gained more and more clarity as time went on. In fact by the time my birthday came around in July last summer, I was feeling stronger than I had in many years. My meditations continued to be powerful. My asana practice started to return to the form it had been at after 30 years on the mat. What was new and unique for me though was a level of mental clarity that I had never known in my entire life. 

Between sobriety and my TBI, it was as if something had been cracked open inside my brain and I was able to go in deeper and look at things that would have otherwise avoided because they had been too painful for me to pay attention to previously. 

One of the first things that I took note of as I was paying closer attention to things was the actual day of the accident. I started to remember more about the slip and fall and the timelines that surrounded my injury. Somewhere in the haze of the 24 hours that came directly after me cracking my head open on the ice, I now know that I was shown an exit door. 

It might have happened in the 2 to 3 minutes that I was unconscious on the ice before the paramedics arrived. It might have happened later that night when I wanted to go to sleep and Christiana urged me to get up and go back to the hospital. It might’ve happened anywhere in that first 24 hours, but as I sit here now I have absolutely no doubt that I was shown a potential exit point that day and I was given permission to take it if I felt that the path ahead was too hard and that my life was never going to get any easier or any better. 

Eternal peace can be a very seductive temptress after a couple of years of exceptional turmoil, but the message I heard in response when I considered my options was this very clear message:

“You are free to go with no shame, but you have unfinished business to attend to if you choose to stay.” 

I want to point out specifically here, that I was not offered the opportunity to GO BACK, but rather the opportunity TO STAY. I never left my body. I didn’t float up over the ice or drift up to the ceiling above my bed and look back down in one of those operating room style near death experiences. The whole thing was as simple as looking at a door that I could either walk through or not walk through. To me it didn’t seem much different than the dozens of times we look at doors (choices) we can walk through (make) every single day of our lives in more trivial ways. 

It’s taken me a full year to be able to begin to write about this and there’s still so much more to say about it all, but that will happen in time. I’ll also add that this walk to the edge of life that I’m writing about here wasn’t even the most powerful or surprising thing I learned about myself in 2022. When we crack ourselves open and we sit in the experience with our full presence and attention it certainly isn’t easy, but the things we can learn about ourselves are profound. I know now that my unfinished business has much more to it than just being a father and a husband. I am here to fulfill a life purpose that I am only now able comprehend. The magnitude of it all would have crushed a previous version of myself. Many questions are yet to be answered, but as I like to say, "The magic is in the mystery of it all." 

So how would I fill in the blank one year after my entire life cracked open? Here’s how:

“Everything will be better when I finally remember that I already have everything. I can spend my days waiting and wanting for more or remembering and taking note of all the richness that already exists. I've learned that my life is precious and fragile and valuable all at the same time. I'm grateful for the lesson..."

Thanks for taking this time to celebrate with me today. When we are grateful not only for our blessings, but also for our challenges we receive the gift of abundance in all aspects of life. Love and blessings to you for a fabulous week. Until next time, 

Jim