Healthy Brain, Happy Life (40 page)

The third way that meditation has impacted my life is probably the most important. It has been by bringing more compassion into my life. This started with the loving kindness meditation. I admit that first I thought that the goal was send more compassion out into the world. In other words, be nice. But I have come to realize that this is not the way it works at all. Instead, I realized that I needed to first focus the loving kindness meditation on myself. I found it surprisingly difficult to do this, even more difficult than the idea of being loving and compassionate to others. I realized that I had been so hard on myself for so long, that I wasn’t working hard enough or wasn’t successful enough, that one of the most profound things that the meditation practice brought was quiet time to consider my own loving compassion to myself. With meditation, I have learned how to love and trust myself to a level that I never had before. Yes, I am more confident and much happier. This is not just because I have more friends and a more balanced life. The confidence and joy are also grounded in my own self-approval. This is huge for me, and many others, I suspect. At some point, I had to ask myself, Do I approve of me?

My answer to myself was, Am I
allowed
to approve of me? I had spent so much time using external measures of my own success that self-approval had somehow disappeared. The practice of meditation has allowed me to shift my practice of using only external sources to judge my self-worth and instead start using my own scale to measure how successful I am, how happy I am, and what it is I want to do next. Only when I really started loving and appreciating myself could I then turn that love and compassion to the world around me. Loving myself and others has shifted the way I see the world, which is no longer a teeming snarled snake pit to survive but a lovely garden to find my way through.

This may sound like I’m giving meditation too much credit for these personal changes, but keep in mind how many years had gone into transforming aspects of my life, from how I spent my time to how my body felt to cultivating my own mind-body connection. I was ready for the next shift that meditation brought about. I had primed my brain for plasticity, and the meditation seemed to bring it all home.

How has my behavior changed because of this new level of self-love? Focusing on loving and appreciating and trusting myself has taught me how to better love and appreciate and trust others. I know now that even something as difficult and painful as breaking up with someone can ultimately be an act of loving. That’s exactly what it was with Peter, and that act of loving has given me a friend whom I continue to love and support in my life.

This raises an even more interesting question about how we study meditation. If you have noticed, these kinds of transformations of self-worth or self-love were not mentioned once in the neurobiological studies of meditation. Those studies focused on brain waves or anatomical changes associated with meditation. From a neuroscience perspective, those are fine measures to start with, but my own experience with meditation suggests that there are much deeper and much more complex issues that one can examine with respect to the brain and meditation. All the changes that I experienced were examples of brain plasticity and seem to have some neurobiological basis. What is the network associated with enhanced self-love and acceptance? What happens when we shift our personal judgment system from an external-based model to an internal-based one? Also, I used a mixed bag of different kinds of meditation from Wayne Dyers’s AH Meditation to Deepak Chopra’s meditation challenges to loving kindness meditations. Which kind of meditation was doing what? By the way, my own mixed bag of meditation styles reflects the styles that have been used in published studies of meditation, making it difficult to compare across different practices. All this is to say that there is both an enormous potential for our understanding of the effects of meditation on brain function and an enormously challenging job ahead.

CLOSURE

You might be asking yourself about what happens when someone uses meditation to start living in the present and gains more love and appreciation for themselves. The answer is it heightens that person’s awareness. And sometimes that leads to a beautiful example of closure.

This story starts with my desire to learn more about feng shui. Because I was trying to clear out all the stale old energy from the previous relationships in my life to make way for a wonderful new relationship, I thought this was the perfect time to give the process a try.

I had asked Inessa Freylekhman, a friend and feng shui expert, to come to my apartment. She arrived with burning sage, mantras to chant, and a set of beautiful gold bells from Bali that she used in the ceremony. She explained what each area of the house represents and identified where certain things needed to be moved or adjusted to make the energy flow better. After she evaluated the basic energy flow in my place (deemed good in that it could be improved with a few little fixes), we started walking through my apartment and she suggested that we look together at all the things that I had on my shelves and tables and ask if they represented old relationships and might need to be removed or represented good positive memories. It turned out that I had saved many mementos from those relationships in my life that had not worked out. Freylekhman suggested that I might want to find a new home for those items and refresh the energy in the rooms. I was stunned at the number of little knickknacks and reminders I had lining my walls and shelves, and I started feeling lighter as soon as we started identifying the things I could remove.

Then we got to my closet. It’s a big walk-in closet, and when I opened it up the first thing we saw was a big cello in its case that took up a huge amount of my precious closet space. It was the same cello that François had given me all those years ago in France. Freylekhman asked what it was, and I explained. She asked if I played it, and I said no. Then she asked if I wanted to keep it.

I suddenly and totally unexpectedly started to cry.

She gently asked me what was wrong.

I told her that I felt so guilty for accepting this beautiful cello all those years ago, and not playing it. I told her I felt I didn’t deserve it, and it made me feel like I was a terrible and totally unworthy recipient of this gorgeous gift. My guilt was compounded by my memory of the horrible way I broke up with François all those years ago over the phone. I have basically been dragging this guilt-riddled cello all around the country with me, not having time to play it and not having the heart to give it away. I hadn’t even thought about it for years, yet there is was, making me burst into tears in the middle of my feng shui session.

I decided there and then that I wanted to give it away so it could do some good.

Freylekhman thought that was a great idea, and we finished our tour of my apartment and she finished all the blessings and mantras around my feng shui session. I would say it was a wonderful success.

I said good-bye to all the items we had identified and even a few more I found on my own and gave them all a new home. My place did feel lighter, airier, with a brand-new energy. I loved it.

Then I got to work on the cello. I learned that a colleague’s daughter was looking for a new cello, and I enthusiastically suggested she could use mine. I loved the idea that it would be used. They got the cello evaluated by my friend’s daughter’s cello teacher, and that’s when I discovered it had a big crack in it in a very bad place. My friend’s daughter could not use it.

Then I learned that one of the students in our graduate program who is a cellist knew of a youth orchestra in need of usable cellos. That seemed like a lovely home for my instrument. They did not take broken cellos, but if I repaired it, they would be happy to take it. The student even gave me the name of his favorite cello-repair guy in the city.

I had everything I needed to implement my donation plan.

But then I did something very unlike me.

I did nothing.

I could not manage to find time to call the cello-repair guy no matter how hard I tried. Months passed until I realized what was wrong. I realized I still could not give my precious cello away—even to kids in need of instruments.

So the cello remained in the closet.

Then I went on a wine-tasting weekend with my friend Gina on the exotic North Fork of Long Island. She had heard that the wine tasting out there was surprisingly good. We both needed a break from the city, so off we went to a cute little bed-and-breakfast place for the weekend. She had big plans for a summer trip, and her friend had told her about a wonderful hotel in, of all places, Bordeaux, France. This place was on an estate with meals included, allowed access to the entire grounds, and was not very expensive. I mentioned my old boyfriend in Bordeaux with whom I had not spoken since college.

She said, wouldn’t it be nice to stay in Bordeaux, and I could visit François and say hello. I was noncommittal because this whole conversation was making me realize something very important.

Yes, I did want to talk to François again, but not on a trip to Bordeaux. I realized that I needed to call and finally thank him properly not only for the cello but for that entire year in France. I knew what I was going to do.

When we got back from that Long Island weekend, I googled “piano tuners in Bordeaux” and didn’t find much until I started looking at the images that came up and found a picture of him tuning a piano. He was looking a little older but it was definitely him. I found he worked for a recording studio and the next morning I woke up at 5:00
A
.
M
. to call the studio to talk to him.

A man answered on the third ring, and in my rusty French, I asked if François was there.

He said, “Non.”

I said, “Oh, doesn’t he work there?”

He said, “Only when I need a piano tuner.”

So he
did
know François!

I explained that I was an old friend from the United States and wanted to get in touch with him and asked if he would be able to give me François’s cell phone number.

He said he had it, but it was at the shop, and he was at home at the moment. He asked me to call back in thirty minutes.

I thanked him and went back to bed for a nap.

About forty-five minutes later I called again, and there was no answer.

By this time my hopes were up that I would actually speak to François so I was crushed when the man didn’t answer the phone. But I told myself to be a little patient and I fixed myself a little breakfast and waited another thirty minutes or so.

My perseverance was rewarded because the next time I called he answered and had François’s cell phone number ready for me. The guy from the studio was very kind and repeated the numbers at least four times to be sure I got them correct. I thanked him and hung up.

Without giving myself any time to think about the fact that I hadn’t spoken to François for twenty-eight years and chicken out, I immediately called François’s number and waited.

Someone picked up on the second ring.

I asked, “C’est François?”—Is this François?

He said, “Oui c’est moi.”—Yes, it’s me.

I said (in French), “Oh! This is an old friend from the United States; this is Wendy Suzuki.”

He said (in French), “Hello!”

I said, “You don’t seem that surprised to hear from me!”

He said that his friend from the recording studio had called him to tell him that an American woman was calling for him. He said I was the only American woman he knew, so he thought it was probably me.

We both laughed, and we had a nice time catching up with our families and our lives. His family is all well and he is now married with two daughters. I gave him a brief update about my family and my life.

He asked after my cello. I happily (and with a sense of relief) told him it was doing just fine.

That was the moment I took to tell him the real reason I called. I took a breath and said that because of the cello I realized that I had never properly thanked him for such an important experience in my life. I told him how special that whole year with him was to me. I told him (with a big lump in my throat) that I was calling him to finally say, “Thank you.”

He was quiet for a moment.

All he said was, “Merci, Wendy.”

He said the breakup had been very difficult for him and that year together had meant a lot to him as well. He said he was very happy to be in contact again after such a long time. We promised to be in touch via e-mail, wished each other the best, and hung up.

It was the ultimate example of closure in my life.

That conversion with François completely eliminated a huge piece of twenty-eight-year-old relationship baggage from my life. I had to be able to thank and acknowledge François for everything that year brought to me and all the wonderful new things it opened up to me to be able to fully appreciate anyone new coming into my life. That conversation together with my newly fung shui-ed apartment filled my home with a palpable new light and energy. It has also resulted in my repairing my beautiful cello—it’s taking up a brand-new place of honor in my living room. Cello lessons are coming soon, but in the meantime I’m relearning how to tune it and play my scales, and it makes me smile every time I look at it.

Yes, I am truly ready to enjoy whatever comes next.