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February 6, 2006
Time to Suffer But No Time to Practice Qigong? The Curious Tale of a Chinese Waiter's Dental Agonies
This Thursday I visited my local Chinese restaurant, which is particularly low quality, for a ritual self-poisoning. Yes, sometimes, I just don't care about the consequences and fulfill my craving for one of my comfort foods: fried rice. Oh well...
However, I’m not writing this to bewail my guilty shortcomings.
But rather because a life-lesson smacked me in the face so hard while I was there, I feel compelled to share it with you:
The usually genial Chinese waiter, who so happily indulges me in my self-poisoning escapades, was this time doubled over in pain.
It was all he could do, between squeezed eyes running with tears, clenched jaw and a face of abject misery, to dump a plate of dubious food at my table before scuttling off to a corner and hunching over in his own world of private pain.
After inhaling my fried rice, I went to pay the damage.
“Are you going to the dentist for that?” I asked my miserable friend as he did his best to process my payment.
It wasn’t really a question, more a way of affirming what he was surely about to do.
His answer astounded me:
“I don’t have time,” he blurted out between grimaces…
And there, I thought, sitting in my car a few moment’s later reflecting on this amazing statement, is our human predicament in a nutshell.
We suffer like hell, a lot of the time we know why we are suffering and we know the remedy but…
“We don’t have time” to fix it.
I hate to think how many times I have gone through a good portion of my day without doing my qigong, while feeling more or less out-of-sorts. And then finally, I can’t stand it anymore or I simply make the time and get some practice in.
The result? Invariably, a flood of well being, followed by hitting myself on the side of the head for being so slow “to take the time” to do what I need to do to alleviate my condition.
Sound familiar to you?
Many years ago I went through the EST process, a benignly cultic, rather earnest bunch who were probably best described as the “Amway of consciousness”. Or perhaps the “Hallmark of self-development”. They specialize in a kind of group spiritual butt-kicking that as obnoxious as it can be, can serve to knock a few cobwebs out of your attic.
One of their favorite homilies (of which they have many) I did love:
“You don’t have the time? Yes, you do, you have all the time there is.”
Words to live by, for sure, and certainly words to live by when it comes to maintaining a regular qigong practice.
Once you have realized the value of qigong practice, be it for greater strength, flexibility, emotional stability, spiritual well being, whatever, then it’s up to you to consistently make the time for that practice.
Qigong is experiential and time dependent. The benefits are not going to happen by sitting around on your duff and vaguely thinking about it or showing up to the occasional session.
Practice qigong on a regular, daily basis and you are less likely to end up with some metaphoric version of the Chinese waiter’s dental pain. Or, if you do find yourself suffering otherwise unavoidable pain (car crash anyone?) you’ll have a toolkit to help you quickly mitigate and resolve that pain.
See all of John Du Cane’s qigong resources.
Posted by james at February 6, 2006 6:20 AM