Communicating to myself

true, but we also imagine what we most fear

This week I taught about why leaders should think hard about the use of symbols in their communications.  We tend to rely on a paltry set of symbols (when they are very common, we think of them as clichés) which weakens our connection to others rather than a rich set of images and metaphors that can feel both joining and arresting at the same time. And then last night I had the experience of watching how important the symbols are in my life right now.

A piece of it is that in this neutral zone between surgery and the rapidly advancing chemo time (9 days), it seems that nearly every conversation is freighted in a new way, heavy with meaning. Each points forward or back, into life or fear or love or sorrow. When people talk about their work, I hear their desire to leave a legacy in the world. When they talk about their children, I see the love that courses through their veins. Did we always talk about these things, really, or does cancer break the surface tension of conversations so that we spend more time in the depths?  I’m not sure.

I am awake on a brilliant Saturday morning in Sydney. I was meant to be awake on a grey morning in Paekakariki for this, my last weekend before I descend into the world of the cancer patient. But there is a massive storm bearing down on NZ right now and I thought I might not be able to get back to Sydney tomorrow for my last week of work. The logical thing to do was to just eliminate the risk and stay here, so I cancelled flights and made hotel reservations and ended up here looking out over the Opera House, watching the ferries come and go on glittery water.

But this weekend too becomes a symbol. I was alone last night, reading and eating and wandering the harbour front. I caught glimpses of my pre-cancer self everywhere—walking along the harbour with Bob Kegan in June, going to the Opera House with my dad last year, meeting friends coming off the ferry and bursting into the shrieking giggles I don’t even know I can produce until I see them. I saw this happy, healthy Jennifer around corners as lovers strolled in the sunset, families struggled with dripping ice cream in the heat, and gaggles of teenagers posed for pictures. Sydney is the city where I’m healthy; Wellington has been the city where I have cancer. But as I walked, my cancer tagged along with me, and the loneliness and fear of chemo shadowed my every thought. By the time I got back to my beautiful hotel with its harbour view, I was weeping.

 

I discovered that Keith, as a thank you for the work we had done together and as a nod to the difficult weekend alone in Sydney, had had flowers delivered to my room. Ironically, though, the flowers were delivered without water (why would a florist send cut flowers with no vase to a hotel room?) and three calls to housekeeping didn’t provide a vase. The symbol of friendship and support just added shadows to the darkness settling in as I watched something beautiful wilt.  The night closed in, and as the moon rose over the Opera House, I fell apart. What kind of healing is it that injects poison into our bodies that makes us sick, puts us at risk of deadly infections, and makes our hair fall out? This seems bizarre and horrible to me, and I am very afraid of it. Right now I am nearly healed from the surgery and it seems bizarre that I would now get so sick in the name of a longer life. Wow.

I plugged in my ipod and listened to a chemo meditation suggested to me by a beautiful blog reader. I listened as the voice worked to change my symbols of chemo and cancer into healing and healthy ones. The hellish poison injected through my veins turned to a healing fountain, connected by a ribbon to me, sending healing liquid into me to dissolve the cancer cells and replace them with normal cells building healthy vital tissue. I dreamt of rushing water and bubbling streams.

Now the flowers sit in their vase: fragile beauty and connection, brief-lived but precious in life-giving liquid. I’ve unpacked my things, including a little stuffed bunny from Grace, Leigh and Judith—a soft little reminder of the love of others from far away. The city awaits me. I’ll go see if I can catch a glimpse of the platypus at the aquarium, my sweet spirit guide from when I was a baby with a stuffed platypus toy in my crib. I’ll buy a few things to tide me over from this unexpected extension of the trip. I’ll keep my eyes open for a necklace or pin or image that makes me think of the healing ribbon of liquid that will make me sick to make me well. I live inside these symbols and they create me. I am working to watch my diet and not allow much sugar into my body; I also need to watch the symbols I indulge in and see if I can craft lifegiving rather than life sapping ones. I teach leaders to watch the symbols they use with others, but I am learning how careful I need to be with the symbols I use to create my own life.

To close, the poem that opened my dissertation, not so far away from this idea (and thank you, Kate, for the poem on my blog yesterday and for the card that filled me with joy in its stark elegance and in the grace of the poem you wrote for me. Zowie)

I Would Like to Describe

By Zbigniew Herbert

I would like to describe the simplest emotion

joy or sadness

but not as others do

reaching for shafts of rain or sun

I would like to describe a light

which is being born in me

but I know it does not resemble

any star

for it is not so bright

not so pure

and is uncertain

I would like to describe courage

without dragging behind me a dusty lion

and also anxiety

without shaking a glass full of water

to put it another way

I would give all metaphors

in return for one word

drawn out of my breast like a rib

for one word

contained within the boundaries

of my skin

but apparently this is not possible

and just to say -- I love

I run around like mad

picking up handfuls of birds

and my tenderness

which after all is not made of water

asks the water for a face

and anger

different from fire

borrows from it

a loquacious tongue

so is blurred

so is blurred

in me

what white-haired gentleman

separated once and for all

and said

this in the subject

this is the object

we fall asleep

with one hand under our head

and with the other in a mound of planets

our feet abandon us

and taste the earth

with their tiny roots

which next morning

we tear out painfully