Another Train…

Recently, the song “Another Train,” by British balladeer Pete Morton, has been going through my head repeatedly, particularly the chorus:

“There’s another train, there always is. Maybe the next one is yours, step up and climb aboard… another train.”

I’ve always liked this song — its optimism about not only second chances, but third and fourth and fifth… a sequence of chances to get on another train if you’ve missed the one you thought you needed. The song seemed prophetic when I heard it on the radio the morning I was scheduled to see a client who had lost many things — his business, his health, his savings, many of his important relationships. I’d been working with him to find a new direction, and, through a variant of the “miracle question” exercise , we’d discovered that his internal flywheel, the thing that kept him going when the going was tough, was reading train magazines. Though it was probably a year before he’d even mentioned trains to me, he knew more about railroads than any person I can imagine who was not a historian of the subject. He’d been fascinated by them since boyhood and had never let up in his studies. His “next train” could, we realized, literally be a train or, more precisely, a job on the railroad.

After this realization, my client spent months trying to make connections with people in the railroad business. Several people he knew had some kind of rail transportation in their background — commuter rail, Amtrak, the subway system, marine rail. He pursued these connections.

More time passed, and gradually his enthusiasm began to wane. He grew despondent. Then a call to come for an interview came — when he was 2000 miles away, dealing with an ailing sibling. Had he blown his only chance? Had he missed his train — again? Was this whole idea of starting out in the railroad, in the midst of middle age, just a foolish pipedream?

I gave him a copy of the lyrics to “Another Train.” I talked about my own second chances, and those of friends and clients I have known. We brainstormed additional ways he could find his way into the railroad system. He left the session somewhat heartened, tentatively acknowledging that maybe “there’s another train, there always is,” and perhaps the next one could be his.

The following morning, I came into my office to a message from this client. He had, he said, good news. The railroad had called two hours after our session, and he was getting an interview for an available position the following week! When I saw him today, he said the interview went well, and he thought he had a good shot at the job. But he also had a backup plan, just in case. You guessed it — another train job for another railroad.

I’ve started to see that second chances are everywhere. In Hollywood, for instance, actors seem to be in every film that opens for a few years, and then many of them disappear, only to arrive on the scene some years later for another run. John Travolta and Jon Voigt come to mind, but there are many others. Their initial trains went off on a siding, but eventually another train came along, and they stepped up and climbed aboard.

In my own life, I’ve come to see the value of the “Another Train” philosophy. I now see losses not so much as tragedies but as unexpected forks in the road. Relationships, jobs, other “lost” opportunities are also opportunities, one door closing so another one can open. Photography disappeared for 20 years, but when I picked up a camera again it returned with freshness and vibrancy. Writing has come and gone many times. I have a strong fathering instinct, but have no children of my own. That fathering instinct, however, has come into play many times with the clients I work with, many of whom need a kind of re-parenting. The next train for them is me, the good parent figure. The next train for me is them, the child — often in an adult’s body — who needs a good father.

Loss, now, is followed by a period of mourning for what was lost and for what I imagined would be yet to come, and then by an absence of regret. There’s another train, I tell myself. And, in one form or another, there always is.

What inspires you to get up and climb aboard? When, in your life, have you found another train?

This post is about the transformative power of the spiritual imagination.

A couple of years ago, I was stricken with a gastrointestinal bleed. By the time it was identified, I had already lost about two pints of blood, and I was also rapidly losing weight. Fourteen years before, a similar scenario had brought me within minutes of death. The present situation seemed serious to my physician and gastroenterologist and frightening to me. I underwent a battery of tests, beginning with simple ones — testing for occult blood, measuring hemoglobin and hematocrit counts — and, as the bleeding continued, endoscopy, colonoscopy, and an abdominal ultrasound.

Much to my surprise, the gastroenterologist had never mentioned the relatively benign explanations my physician had offered for my still-undiagnosed problem (bleeding polyp, anal fissure, hemorrhoids), and instead cited more serious conditions, a set of “C’s” including Celiac disease, colitis, Crohn’s disease, and the Big C, cancer. As each round of tests ruled out one set of damaged organs and by implication ruled in the remaining set, the problem area eventually narrowed to my small intestine, which could only be imaged, without surgery, by my swallowing a small camera known as a PillCam. The PillCam procedure required insurance company approval, and that took ten days.

Ten days is a long time to wait when you are bleeding internally.

In the interim, I found myself feverishly scanning the Internet for information on all the illnesses my gastroenterologist had mentioned, and for any other maladies that could explain my symptoms. Nothing I found was simple or likely to get better by itself. I fantasized about a repeat of the botched surgery I had undergone following my 1993 bleeding incident, imagined fatal outcomes, feared the unknown.

And then, with the help of a Buddhist friend’s intervention and an act of Imagination, I stopped fretting.

My friend e-mailed me a Buddhist verse on using wisdom and courage to deal with acceptance of sickness. It’s intention is to help us regard sickness, health, long life or early death as, equally, gifts from the Universe, all to be welcomed equally, all to be transmuted into service to other sentient beings. It is described as a way to transform suffering into enlightenment. Here it is:

I rely on you, Buddhas and Bodhisattvas,
Until I achieve enlightenment.
Please grant me enough wisdom and courage to be free from delusion.

If I am supposed to get sick, let me get sick,
And I’ll be happy.
May this sickness purify my negative karma
And the sickness of all sentient beings.

If I am supposed to be healed, let all my sickness and confusion be healed,
And I’ll be happy.
May all sentient beings be healed
And filled with happiness.

If I am supposed to die, let me die,
and I’ll be happy.
May all the delusion
And the causes of suffering beings die.

If I am supposed to live a long life, let me live a long life,
And I’ll be happy.
May my life be meaningful
In service to sentient beings.

If my life is to be cut short, let it be cut short,
And I’ll be happy.
May I and all others be free
From attachment and aversion.</quote>
 
The exhortation that introduced this verse instructed me to read it many times a day. I did so, and each time its effect was calming. The continued readings also had a cumulative effect. I stopped looking things up on the Internet. I returned to my work as a therapist. I began to make art again, a practice that has, for years, been soothing and healing. And I began to have a different relationship with time. “Whatever it is,” I found myself thinking about the damaged parts of my innards, “it’s already there.”

Whether I would live or die; whether I would get better by myself, with dramatic interventions, or not at all, was already out there in my future. Just as my diagnosis was out there, waiting for me to arrive, so was the impact of whatever they would find. I didn’t have to fret. I didn’t have to plan. I just had to move forward in time, until I arrived at the moment when my course of action was clear, and then move forward from there.

The idea that “it’s already there” has, since, become more general. When I think about relationships, the fates of people I love, the trajectory of my career as an artist or therapist, I am relaxed by the thought that it, too, is already there — that the seeds have been planted, the tendrils that will become the plants that will become the fields of flowers are already sprouting somewhere in the future, and that in that future they have already either found the nourishment they need, or the have not, and that in either case we will all arrive at our future and continue from there.

This is not pre-destination. This is not resignation to my fate. This is not just “que sera, sera.” This is something that, while I can’t fully explain it, feels like the most liberating realization I have ever had. It’s already there. I don’t need to fret about it. I don’t need to fuss and plan and push. I just need to live my life to the best of my ability, and, of the infinite possible futures, I will inevitably arrive at the one that is mine.

I can handle that.

Anxiety has, for me, always been about fearing what will be. Or, more precisely, it’s about the fear that I won’t be able to handle what is around the next bend. And I still get anxious about this kind of thing. But since this “already there” realization, I often catch myself fretting and, instead, give myself a kind of grace. The grace that whatever situation I will encounter, I will handle. That I do not need to prepare for it. That I need, instead, to trust that when the moment arrives, I will be ready, as, by virtue of the fact that I am still standing, I must have been ready for everything that has come before. It’s already there. It really is. All I have to do is keep putting one virtual foot in front of the other and I will arrive.

I already have.