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Toward the end of Eat, Pray, Love, Elizabeth Gilbert talks about a Buddhist philosophy in which an oak tree is brought into creation by two forces at the same time:  the acorn, which grows into the tree, and the future tree itself, which wants so badly to exist that it pulls the acorn into being, guiding the evolution from nothingness to maturity. She says, “I think of everything I endured before getting here and wonder if it was this future me – this happy balanced me – who pulled the younger, more confused and struggling me forward during those hard years. The younger me was the acorn full of potential, but it was the future me, the already-existent oak, who was saying the whole time: Grow! Change! Evolve! Come and meet me here, where I already exist.”

I can so relate to this. Several years ago, right after we were married, my wife, Susan, and I went through a dramatic period during which our physical, emotional, and financial well-being were threatened.  I was forty-six at the time, and it was my first marriage. It was Susan’s third. As an architect who had worked ten-hour days at my own small firm for most of my working life, I was ready to give it a rest. Susan was a massage therapist, and although she loved her work, she was also ready for a change.  We decided to retire and move to a small mountain town in Julian, California, build our dream home, and live the simple life.

Unfortunately, things don’t always go as planned. Before we could start construction on our mountain home, Susan was diagnosed with breast cancer and totally flipped out.  Ever since Susan was a child, she had been afraid of dying from cancer, and, now that she had been diagnosed, she was sure that her days were numbered.  I jumped in, trying to do what I could: I attended all her doctor appointments, massaged her to sleep when she was stressed out, tried to just listen and not force my logical opinions onto her emotional behavior and, in general, let her know that she wasn’t alone.

Susan had always taken the natural approach to health but was anxious to get the cancerous tumor out of her breast as quickly as possible. She decided on surgery to remove the tumor, and then skipped radiation and chemotherapy in favor of holistic treatments including natural foods, supplements, meditation, and psychotherapy.

About this same time, my sister informed us that she was filing for a divorce from an abusive husband. We had no idea that her husband was abusive but discovered that he had a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde personality. What else could Susan and I do but jump in with both feet to help out?

Meanwhile, our dream of building our retirement home had come to almost a complete standstill.  We were building the house ourselves, and, between all the medical appointments, court hearings, attorney meetings, helping my sister with the mountain of paperwork it required to make it through a divorce, and trying to protect her and the children from their abusive father, there just wasn’t a lot of time left over to work on the house.

Finally, after three long years, Susan and I moved into our mountain home. It was one of the happiest days of our lives — but we didn’t have long to enjoy it.  A few months later, the California wildfires raced through our small community. Holding out until the last moment, trying to save our home, we were eventually forced to evacuate when a thousand-foot wall of smoke and flames were within a hundred yards of our back door.  The Cedar Fire turned seventy per cent of the homes in our neighborhood – including ours — into six-inch layers of ash.

Susan and I were devastated. Our dream home and the beautiful forest that surrounded us were gone.  We had no idea where we were giving to live, and, to top it off, we were still dealing with the Susan’s cancer and helping my sister with her divorce.  And, oh yeah, did I mention we were penniless?  We had invested our retirement money in the stock market which soon began a slide that ended up in the biggest drop since the Great Depression.  Our retirement money, like our home and the forest, were gone.

The thing that most helped Susan and I through this tough period of our lives – not just to make it through but to actually come out smiling and feeling stronger for the experiences – was that we tried to view these events from the perspective of what I call the “Big Picture” view of life.  We tried not to get caught up in the overwhelming emotions of the moment, to step back from the anger, the worry, the frustration, and see the experiences for what they really were.  And what we discovered was that by stepping back, we could find ways to learn from them, ways in which we could help others dealing with the same issues, and ways in which we could laugh at what was happening. It’s amazing how funny things are when you look for the humor in them.  It’s also amazing how hard it is to feel sorry for yourself when you’re trying to learn, help others, and laugh.

You’ll notice I used the word “tried.” There’s no question it was hard to step back when I was overwhelmed by anger, frustration or worry. The last thing on my mind at those times was to look at the Big Picture. But when I untangled myself from the overwhelming emotions of the moment, I could gain a different perspective. The results were definitely worth the effort, and I even wrote a book about our experiences, “Looks Easy Enough: A Joyful Memoir of Overcoming Disease, Divorce and Disaster.”

I think of Elizabeth Gilbert’s words and truly believe that the future me and the future Susan did have a hand in pulling us through those tough times.  And in an effort to help, they made us — the younger and struggling me and Susan — aware of the Big Picture view of life so that we could come out smiling. They brought us into the future.

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The eSSSence of Scott Stevenson

Style: Relaxed, loose fitting jeans, loose t-shirt, loose tennis shoes. Do you get the picture?!
Substance: I love contrast: rough - smooth; hot jacuzzi - cold roll in the snow; quiet undisturbed writing in the morning - working up a sweat digging foundations in the afternoon.
Soul: My little philosophy - learn, help others and have fun - gets me through even the toughest of challenges.