it’s really only what happened, small stuff. but the learning is tremendous

Transcript by LeGrande

10 Hours in the Emergency Room

Here I am again. Still in pain but with a cast on my arm.

Yesterday I spent ten hours at the emergency room. They took 30 X-rays. Out of the 10 hours, I waited for six and spent four inside. It was interesting because I had two completely opposing encounters.

One is I experienced myself delightful. That means I was full of delight despite the fact that I had to pee for hours and didn’t know where the bathroom was. And I was hungry because I didn’t have breakfast. I was hurting. They set the bones and gave me a lidocaine injection straight into my wrist. Ai-yi-yi…I wouldn’t wish that on my worst enemy!

Some of the context that allowed me to be delightful is “This too shall pass.” I didn’t see this miserable, painful or tedious experience as filling my future. It was happening now and I can deal with anything that has a limited duration. That is a very useful attitude to have because I think most of us are more unhappy, miserable, bored, lazy or procrastinating because we cannot see that the nature of the universe is change.

It means nothing is permanent–neither pain nor happiness. If it’s not permanent, you will have thousands of opportunities to have it more, better, different, even strikingly different if you wish.

The main ingredient is this: there is nothing wrong, nothing needs to be fixed–not even the huge hospital bill they are going to give me. I am going to cross that bridge when I get there. I am going to negotiate a payment plan because their alternative plan is not getting paid at all. For a little while, I’m going to work to pay this bill which will probably be thousands of dollars based on the 30 X-rays they took and the six(!) doctors that saw me.

“This too shall pass.” That is the attitude you want to have.

What i don’t on the audio: good and bad… it will all pass. really
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