Carolyn North (carolynnorthbooks.com) is a writer of books that address "the interface between matter and spirit." (Lest readers be concerned about her well-being, she notes that the events she documents happened a few years ago.)
PUTNEY-After my rather inexpert attempt to propel a canoe over high swells, I sit waiting for a call from the hospital to schedule an appointment with a surgeon, my body on fire and all my pain receptors on high alert.
Ouch.
It has turned out that I have managed to tear something internal. The fancy name for the sharp pains in my belly was a "paraesophageal hiatus hernia" - caused, apparently, by my having helped lift a water-filled canoe onto and off the roof of our car at a lake near the Canadian border during a storm. Even though the signs clearly told us not to.
Part of my stomach was lodged in my chest cavity. The pain was impressive, and I was told I'd most likely need surgery.
Now, a few years later, I am wondering at the metaphor.
It seems we are all going through excruciating pain due to a series of wrong choices and major mistakes we've collectively made over centuries - and we don't know quite what to do about it now that things are falling apart.
Who's at fault?
Well, who cares? We're all in this together, like it or not. It's up to us to make some essential changes. The question is how.
* * *
I contemplated that dilemma for myself after learning that. I was distracted and tripped over the garden hose, landing flat on my face on the grass, hearing my head hit the ground with a resounding thwack.
I figured this was the end of me! Not the worst way to go out, I thought, face down in my own garden.
I was able to slowly get back on my feet, chastened, and I walked away pretty much unscathed except for some bruising around the eyes and a strange bloody mark on my forehead.
In case I had not gotten the message, a few days later, food poisoning hit me like a tsunami.
I wonder if this might have been an initiation. It's got all the elements, and the timing seems right.
Looking at the mass protests against our so-called president's wrong-minded policies, I doubt that it's just me who is too distracted to pay attention to where I am putting my feet or focussing my brain.
I doubt this is my experience alone, as our world goes crazy around us and is frantically sending signals that it is time we shift our minds - and hearts - and reconsider everything we thought we knew.
The universe is good at this, hitting us upside the head when we need a wake-up call and making us retch from poisons we had no idea we were consuming.
In my case it happened to be literal - no doubt making sure that I got the point!
Could it be that we are going through a collective initiation right now, getting hit by one disaster after another, knocking us down onto to our knees in order to wake us up?
How else explain a Trump whom we apparently elected into office?
It's an old story: Things fall apart when they are ready to change. Why should we be surprised?
* * *
I remember, at each of my three childbirths, as our new baby lay squalling on my belly, our doctor - and good friend - held up the afterbirth for my husband and me to touch.
"See how it's aging, getting crusty here and worn out there?" he would say, letting us finger the sac our baby had lived in those nine months. "Another week in there and your baby couldn't have survived. Amazing how perfectly timed the process is, see? Timing, dear folks, is everything!"
Labor, as any mother will tell you, is not a stroll in the park. For nine months, we go through everything from morning sickness to sciatica, from aching backs to wild emotions. And then, at last, the heart-and-body-tearing labor brings this new person into the world.
The ecstasy matches the pain every step of the way of this extraordinary transition, but nobody ever promised women that it would be easy, and we keep doing it anyhow because life demands it of us.
So why are we so shocked by the transition we are in the midst of now?
* * *
We're in an ancient pattern of change now, a period of quite essential laboring as the old order crumbles - and good riddance to it - and it is our turn to assist the transition! How lucky is that?
Every one of us here now, I'd say, has been born into the world for this very moment - right now. Not a century ago, not in a century to come, but now.
We're the ones who get to help set the new templates, to bring our own kinds of beauty to the world, to find what and whom we love in this most exciting of eras.
Nobody ever said it would be easy, but has that ever stopped us from procreating? Or kept mountain climbers from climbing Mount Everest and then skiing down it at speed?
So be prepared, if you can be, and be mindful, and smart.
And should you have to lift a heavy canoe rapidly filling with rainwater over your head, make sure there are at least two of you to do so.
This Voices Essay was submitted to The Commons.
This piece, published in print in the Voices section or as a column in the news sections, represents the opinion of the writer. In the newspaper and on this website, we strive to ensure that opinions are based on fair expression of established fact. In the spirit of transparency and accountability, The Commons is reviewing and developing more precise policies about editing of opinions and our role and our responsibility and standards in fact-checking our own work and the contributions to the newspaper. In the meantime, we heartily encourage civil and productive responses at voices@commonsnews.org.