As Mrs. Callahan stood behind me, her mouth at my ear, I was pulled deeper into the current of language. The story unfurled, its storm rolled in as she spoke, then rolled in once more as I repeated the words. To bake a cake in the eye of a storm; to feed yourself sugar on the cusp of danger.

I challenged myself over the course of a single year to write down, as accurately as I could recall, the details of at least one session every week (or every other week) when something interesting caught my eye, when I had the sense that the Buddhist element was in play. Sometimes this influence was overt: people might ask me about meditation technique, or I might spontaneously bring something I had learned from Buddhism into the conversation. And sometimes it was only a feeling: I might find myself reaching beyond traditional analysis to help someone grasp an alternative perspective on whatever issue was troubling them.

Each time I heard it, it seemed so profound! There is so much in life that we cannot control no matter how we try. Circumstances, events, feelings, even our own thoughts! But we can take responsibility for how we relate to what happens. We can grimace with our hands over our ears or we can lift one hand. By now, this has become a refrain in my mind, one that often returns to guide me in my life and in my work with patients.

In so many ways, the world affirmed this way of being. I was rewarded with promotions. Years later, and with the benefit of thousands of hours of introspection, I understand why the world affirmed this way of being. When I moved fast, when I spent my days not truly occupying my life, not standing still, not being real, I found it easier to live in accordance with other people’s expectations. By not standing still, I was able to be the object of everyone else’s projections of who and what I should be. Too busy to live my own life, I took direction from the affirmations of others.

Looking back, I realize this time as the beginning of my own radical self-inquiry. My pain helped me realize that I was lost. My soul, no longer content to be ‘bruised and battered,’ took charge of my body and grabbed the attention of my conscious mind. The headaches, which continued even as the self-inquiry began, became a way for my body to say, in effect, ‘Wake the fuck up.’ For, if I didn’t wake up, my soul was going to drop me to my knees, writhing in pain.