No Goals, No Standards

In the first two weeks of recovering from surgery, I had a rare (for me) experience. I found, to my shock, that in those days I was completely free of goals or standards. No quota of pages to turn out, or work to turn in, or number of crunches to do in a day. At the same time, I seemed to have no sense of private space or concern for dignity, which was convenient since, for part of that time, I was in a hospital. I'd thought that these aspects of my personality were immutable, irreducible.

I did have a large job to do, which was actively assist in my recovery. That included getting myself from bed to bathroom on my own, dragging the IV pole; taking three or four walks a day up and down the halls in my sweaty hospital gown; taking a shower on my own...and so forth. Just as taxing at that point as a day's work. But I had no sense of what my "productivity" was supposed to be, whether I was "running behind," or what would constitute a really good job of taking a shower. I had no self-consciousness; I just did the things that needed to be done, without hesitation or thought.

Week 3: old patterns of thinking kicked back in. I began to grouse: saying to myself that others have probably recovered much faster, that my friend Dan went back to university teaching only 3 weeks after his open-heart surgery, that I was somehow doing this healing thing wrong or at least not in the most effective way, and many, many other variations on that theme.

That's an aspect of my normal life I do not want to take up residence in again. In this one way, I want to go back.

I want the weightlessness of those first two weeks: simply doing, without the self-berating and the self-monitoring and the fear of falling short. That would be bold indeed, and delightful, and no doubt far more productive. I'm trying to figure out how in ordinary daily life it's done. Let me know if you have suggestions.