Sands and Hourglasses

OK, so I finally power watched the new season of House of Cards. Some call that binge watching--when you don't leave the couch until all 13 episodes have been consumed. But I prefer to classify it as an exercise of endurance. It takes real strength to ignore the dishes stacked in the sink with every fork you own buried somewhere under that mess. It's not easy to ignore the loud ding of the dryer when it begs you to remove your clothes before those sweaters become irreversibly wrinkled. Thanks to my dedication and years of training, I made it through Season 3 in one weekend.

There was one tiny thread of a story line that caused a flood of memories for me. Don't worry, there are no spoilers in this post. (But what the hell are you waiting for? Watch the damn show!)

One episode featured a group of Tibetan monks creating a sand mandela in the halls of the White House.

If you haven't seen one of these masterpieces up close, you should most certainly put it on your bucket list. Watching the monks create this magnificent display of colorful sand quite literally a few grains at a time is really something to see. Witnessing the process draws you in with a kind of hypnotic calm.

This Tibetan art is called dul-tson-kyil-khor and it takes these monks weeks of bending over a table to fill in the geometric shapes and religious symbols. Each monk holds a metal funnel called a chak-pur in one hand and a metal rod in the other. He runs the rod down the funnel, which causes the sand to flow out like ink.

But here is the most amazing part of the creation of a mandela. Shortly after the monks complete their masterpiece, they destroy it. They carefully sweep together the sand, mixing the colors into indistinguishable mounds. They collect the sand and take it to a river, where they release it back into the world.

Because the monks know this. They embrace this. Nothing in life is permanent. Everything is transitory. And the more that we accept that, the more at peace we can become.

When I saw that mandela being created in House of Cards, I had such a flood of memories. I once had a very close encounter with this intricate sand art.

When I was a senior in college, back in the Grunge Age, I got an amazing internship with the public relations office of the Salt Lake County Sheriff's Office. It was filled with experiences like nothing in my life would ever match. I saw my first dead person. I was held out the side of the Snowbird Tram by some members of the SWAT team so I could take photos of them doing their free rappelling drills. I was working there when they lost an officer in the line. And I was running information between the command center and the press when Lloyd Prescott happened.

In 1994, the Sheriff's Office was located in a building adjacent to the Salt Lake City Library.  Lloyd Prescott was off duty that day, only in the office to catch up on some clerical work. Someone ran into the Sheriff's Office frantically yelling that a man was in the library with a gun and a bomb and was taking hostages. Then Officer Prescott did something quite amazing. He ran into the library, in his plain clothes that hid his service weapon, and joined the group of hostages without the man waiving a gun taking notice.

Officer Prescott waited with the group of terrified hostages for more than 5 hours. He was afraid to take a shot on the chance that the dead man's switch being held by the gunman was really connected to a bomb. As Hour 6 approached and the gunman told the hostages to draw straws to see who would be shot first, Officer Prescott decided to risk the bomb detonating because he saw that there was a thick wooden table between the bomb and the hostages. He shouted to the hostages to drop to the floor as he pulled his gun and shot the man who was--in one way or another--changing all of our lives. If you are curious, here are more details of the incident.

As the dust of this event was settling, I was tasked with fielding the press inquiries, which included the LA Times, Good Morning America, and Newsweek.

But the thing I remember most about those couple days is the mandela. You see, in the library when this hostage crisis began, there was a group of Tibetan monks meditatively vibrating their chak-pur to fill in the intricate design they had laid out on a table. None of the monks were taken hostage. But they all had to flee the building.

If the story had a different ending, maybe the monks wouldn't have returned to finish and then dismantle their mandela. But it didn't end differently. And only hours after the SWAT team had cleared the building and allowed people to re-enter the library, the monks went back to work on their mandela.

I was lucky enough to observe how those monks--after being interrupted by a frightening, life-threatening situation--returned to their art. All the while reaffirming that all life is transitory. I think everyone involved that day came a bit closer to learning that for ourselves.

It was such a gift.

Spare Change

So once again, I am late to the party. The Fox television show House, MD has been off the air for a couple years now. And I had never seen a single episode, even after it was recommended by Diane Rehm on her NPR show. Lesson learned. Always trust a recommendation from Diane. Now that it's on Netflix, I’m hooked. And not just because of dreamy Hugh Laurie and his mad piano skills.

Like any worthwhile form of entertainment, House got me thinking. One of the good doctor’s mantras is that everyone lies. And they do. But, it was another thing he said that keeps rolling around my head.

Do people ever really change?

When I got my MS diagnosis almost a year ago, I had to quit smoking. And I did. Immediately and cold turkey. There is nothing like the threat of a chronic debilitating illness to scare you straight(-ish).

I’m stubborn. Precocious. Tenacious. I have been for my whole life, and that will never change. Quitting smoking was not me changing. It wasn’t strength or willpower. I was just stubborn enough to quit.

How is stopping a bad habit NOT a change? Because it is only a change in routine, not a change of who I am. I will backfill that hole where smoking used to be with some other habit—café mochas, as it turns out—because that need for ritual and pleasure will be there forever. I will never be able to remove that need that was once filled by smoking. Much like one of the two dozen scars in my brain, once it’s there, it is there for the remainder of my days. I can’t change it. I can only choose how I act on it.

I’m working on a project in my house. I’m moving my bedroom to the lower part of my split-level and creating a mini-man cave for the Kidlet in the soon-to-be-vacant master bedroom. I love a good project. Once I get going on one, I become very single-minded. Perhaps a bit obsessive. Maybe a touch excessive. But that has always been the way I do things. And the people who know me best know that about me.

Sister MSW helped me move an enormous and  heavy TV set from the lower level to the upper level. And this was after she had just run 10 miles. Yep, I wasn’t going to let her exhaustion stop me from enlisting her help. Enlisted may be too generous of a word. Drafted may be a better description.

When we had hauled all that weight up the stairs, she said, “You are in your manic stage of your project.”  She knew me well enough to recognize where I was in my head. Because that is how I have always been, and that will never change. I don’t mind the manic-project stage. I get shit done.

I used to think a good therapist could help me change. Help me change why I do what I do. But, the more therapy I have, the more I realize that the point of therapy is figuring out ways to cause myself less self-destruction while dealing with the parts of me that I cannot change.

Do people ever really change? Or do they just try to convince us that they have changed? Or maybe they are just trying to convince themselves.

Can people change? Probably not. Things change, people react. Reacting is not the same thing as changing.

Yeah, yeah. I know. If we can’t change, we will always be the caterpillar and never the butterfly. But I think that is a flawed, short-sighted argument. Becoming a butterfly was always what was going to happen to that caterpillar, unless he got eaten by a bird or squished by the kid that found him in the schoolyard. His caterpillar body may change, but the fact that he would eventually sprout wings never can. So, let’s all stop using the butterfly metaphor.

The science of psychology tells us this: People don’t change, they just become a more clear version of who they really are. People don’t change, only priorities do. If you think someone has changed, the truth is that you are only learning who they really were all along.

When I think about the people I know best, I can’t remember the last time one of them genuinely surprised me with something they did or something they didn’t do. I can predict their actions because people don’t change.  And that is OK too, because there is a certain feeling of security in knowing there won’t be many surprises. I've had enough surprises of late.

Nothing ever really changes.