The week before Christmas I had two deadlines.  My wrists and hands began to ache and burn.  Each keystroke sent a burning sensation shooting up my arms.  Friends said I must be suffering from carpal tunnel syndrome.  For a writer this sounds like a death sentence.  I finished the work for Architecture Week and the essay for the anthology, All Out of Faith: Southern Women on Spirituality, strapped braces to both of my wrists and started to research my options.  

I can’t imagine not writing.  And so I have begun experimenting with voice recognition technology.  But the process is very different.  Writing for me takes place in silence.  The energy of thought passes through my hands without producing physical sound.  The thoughts and words arrive so quickly that they require little effort.  For this journal entry I am instead speaking aloud and patiently waiting for the words to appear on the screen.  I feel somewhat like a child learning to write all over again.  I know very little about this problem of carpal tunnel and plan to see a doctor and welcome input from anyone who has had a similar experience.

Copyright:  Debra Moffitt, 2008.  www.debramoffitt.com

A few years ago, I raised my hand in Buddhist philosophy class and announced to my Korean professor who’d been reading convoluted passages of Buddhist texts.  “I’m confused.”

He paused, smiled, content.  “It means you’re learning very much,” he said with his heavy, halting accent. 

This left me in an even deeper state of confusion.  I puzzled over his response.  All of my professors, students, friends – everyone had answers.  Answers about the French Revolution, about which rock bands ruled and the best places to find pizza.  But years later this is the one lesson that remained with me. 

When I feel anxious, uncomfortable and yes, confused, about what I’m doing or where I’m going those profound words of wisdom pop up again and again.  “You’re learning very much.”

In reflections, I’ve determined that the comfortable mind, the one that returns again and again to the same actions and reactions is like a trained animal.  It goes through the motions that it knows.  But when faced with something new, it must adapt.  It crawls out of the comfort zone, out of the usual blissful numbness of knowing into that dark gray area of uncertainty. 

“How can I return to the comfortable equilibrium?” I ask.  Change forces the mind to explore new territory and find a new approach.  Confusion is the result of not knowing – and looking for an answer. 

I like allowing the space of not knowing the answers and now recognize my state of confusion as a state of learning.   As I continue to write and work through my book, I’m moving into a new state, the one of Finish, the State of Completion.  What a blissful place to arrive it – and rest – if only for a little while.

Copyright:  Debra Moffitt, 2008    www.debramoffitt.com

At an ashram in Andhra Pradesh, India, I rushed to the telecom office to make a call to the outside world.  Useless to rush in rural India because everything rolls on at an ox-cart pace and it’s hard to run in leather sandals over the dusty road anyway.  I arrived at the tiny office across from the temple of the five-headed goddess, Gayathri and found a long line of people sitting in three rows of orange plastic molded seats.  I took the last chair at the end of the line. 

About eight of the twelve glass and wood phone booths still worked and English, Punjabi and Telegu could be heard indistinctly from booths.  When a new one opened up, the sari-clad woman at the head of the line moved out of her seat and the woman behind her moved into what had been her chair.  The whole line of people advanced in a ripple, like an ocean wave.  Every few minutes each person, down the four rows of chairs – two against the wall and two back to back – had to move up into the seat ahead of them.  It created human waves, rising and falling.  By the time the last person had sat down, the first one in line moved into a phone booth and the whole movement started over again.

I’d heard my teacher refer to humans as waves on the ocean.  Here was a tide flowing towards the old phones to call out. 

This system fascinated me.  No numbered tickets, no elbowing to the front.  Each of us sat in sweltering silence waiting for our turn to speak out to the world.  Perhaps it was a metaphor for writing, communicating and timing.  We have to wait for a space to open up, to clear up so that we can call out.  The timing and the message has to be right, and we're all interconnected.  When one person moves forward so do the others.

With the Gayathri watching over to control the five senses and bring in light, communicating becomes conscious, deliberate and peaceful.  Use the form of God that speaks to you as a focus for writing and devote the outcome to Him/Her.  The words that emerge from concentrating on the divine uplift, expand and facilitate exchanges in the world and bring peace and unity rather than division. 

Copyright Debra Moffitt, 2008.  www.debramoffitt.com