Dragon Slayer?

Perhaps all the dragons in our lives
are princesses who are only waiting

to see us act, just once,

with beauty and courage.

Rainer Maria Rilke

Anyone facing a serious illness knows all too well the roller coaster rides that are moments of profound courage and absolute fear. If they are like me, they have most likely noticed that acts of courage seem to be an uphill climb with the full weight of gravity pressing against one's chest. Moments of fear, on the other hand, seem like a free fall with ever-increasing speed that are best encountered with eyes closed.

The transformation from feeling like a well-rooted tree to shaking like a leaf comes so quickly at times that one has to wonder who it is that resides at the core of the soul, hero or coward. In my case, it often feels like the very attempt to keep a stiff upper lip makes my whole body tremble. It's as if the effort to resist fear and weakness drains me of the energy I need at the time. What a trap. How to slay today's dragon after, in the words of Monty Python, "soiling my armor"?

This past week's monster was in the form of the chemo beast that was feeding on my hair follicles. The shock I felt with each handful of hair was not just the "What am I going to look like bald?" question (although, believe me, that was the primary concern) but the stunning reminder of how potent the chemical mix in my body is and what it's doing on a cellular level. Here was a not so subtle reminder of why the word cancer can cause even the bravest of souls to quiver; its very treatment is hazardous and, let's face it, toxic. Searching for the Holy Grail of recovery in the face of such a nemesis would seem to require King Arthur-like resolve with a touch of a Bruce Willis "Yippee ki yay," attitude (Never my forte).

What I found, however, was that the ability to face this, and all of my recovery related crises, came not from steeling myself for the attack but in the act of surrender. Not surrender in the white flag, I lose, sense, but the deeper surrender that comes from no longer fighting what is. Saying "yes" to the present moment is the cornerstone of mindfulness practice and the source of great strength. It is quite simply, fear minus the resistance; the courage to stay right where you are and not seek shelter in the past or future.

The Vietnamese Zen Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh teaches, "There is no escaping the things we hate, we can only transform them into the things we love." We do this by turning the light of our awareness on the things that scare us the most. This means that we don't have to slay our dragons, which in the end is only a struggle with the self. By staying with the present moment, in a nonjudgmental frame of mind, we find, as the German writer Rilke suggested, that "Everything that frightens us, is in its deepest essence, something helpless that wants our love."

So it was that I walked head long (pun intended) into my local hair salon and told the woman who normally cuts my hair what adventure awaited us today. As she held the Excalibur of all shears in hand she asked, "How much are we taking off?" "All of it," I managed to choke out. And that's the last I remember before passing out. Just kidding, I was conscious throughout, but strangely detached. As she spun the chair around to the mirror, so that I was now looking directly at the new me, I had to admit I felt somewhat proud of what I had accomplished. Now there would be no more mornings cleaning out the shower drain, no more having to sweep the bathroom floor after every combing, and no more anxious moments spent wondering how long before anyone noticed the man with the incredible thinning hair.

I walked out of that salon feeling triumphant, buoyed no doubt by one hair stylist's comments that she "loved the look" (Yeah, I still got it). I wish you could have seen the moment, shaven head held high, sunglasses on, cool breeze blowing across a freshly mown scalp. It was a thing of beauty.