For Buddhists, caring about the health of a living being means taking care of it globally. All aspects of the patient's life must therefore be taken into account: the physical, the mental, but also the environment – from the entourage to the place of life -, because they act directly on him. Also, when I ticked the box: "Travel for compelling reasons, to assist vulnerable people", I knew more or less consciously that helping my father, who was at that time in great distress, would take time. And this time the containment offered it to me.
The joy of the morning at the wheel of my car, after three weeks cloistered in my apartment, was stopped short when I discovered my father sitting in front of his house, his eyes haggard, visibly completely lost. Left largely to itself. Since all visits had been interrupted, he lived in chaos both externally and internally, immersed in the suffering and precariousness of his situation.
Not really knowing where to start, I did what I knew how to do: I sorted, cleaned, tidied up and decorated each room of his house, taking care to adapt them to his handicap and his cognitive problems. At the same time, I set up a global fitness program: blood test, dietetics, guided meditation sessions, music at sunset, walks to the places of his childhood, spiritual readings at breakfast... I challenged his habits and his place of life as if to wake him up by awakening him to the magic of the present moment. I wasn't premeditating anything, ideas were jostling, I was in total letting go, as if guided.
Confinement and Contentment
This joyful and inexhaustible energy that awakened in me, simply by doing my best and without expecting anything in return, transformed us both. My father has come back to life, his gaze has regained its former malice, his memory fails him less, his steps are surer and I have discovered… contentment! Because I realized that I was fundamentally happy in this difficult situation. This stay of several weeks was a grace, an inner liberation, as if the spirit, when it is no longer locked up in the gangue of the ego, blossomed and radiated effortlessly, available for those who need it. need, including ourselves.
“I jostled my father's habits and his place of life as if to wake him up by awakening him to the magic of the present moment. I wasn't premeditating anything, ideas were jostling, I was in total letting go, as if guided. »
So yes, Officer, it was indeed an “imperative” trip! And more than ever, I realize how important it is to show equanimity, equanimity and detachment. Without this pandemic, even if we can only regret this event, I would have come for two or three days and I would have found my obligations and my Parisian life. My father would probably no longer be at home, in his country house that he loves so much, and I would have been deprived of an unprecedented initiatory experience. Because, today more than yesterday, I know who I am. I once read that what we are is less about what we do than about what we are able to do when we least expect it. I approve!