Insomniac Encounters His Holiness

There is something kind of sick about lying awake at 2 a.m. thinking about how totally exhausted you are going to be tomorrow, and trying to figure out if there is any possible way you'll be able to work in a nap sometime before dinner, because you're sooooooo tired and it sure would feel good to just lie down in bed and close your eyes and relax, but tomorrow afternoon is pretty well booked up, so a nap is unfortunately out of the question... And then realizing that -- hello! -- you are in fact lying down in bed right now, and this would be the perfect time to close your eyes and relax... if only you could.

Three or four nights of this sort of thing tend to put me in a strangely vulnerable, unedited state, open to emotional extremes and sensory overloads both good and bad. I take a sip of my latte and am flooded with cosmic gratitude. We're out of sandwich bread and it's a crushing omen of maternal failure on a global scale. I encounter a raisin in a bowl of squash soup and its sweetness sends me reeling. I bungle the combination lock on my mailbox and am reduced to tears. I drive by a man in a leather jacket putting a giant stuffed flamingo into the back of his bright blue convertible and am cheered beyond reason. You get the idea.

So there I was, poised somewhere between cosmic gratitude and crushing failure, when someone handed me a ticket to go see the Dalai Lama yesterday. (He's in town for five days -- check it out.) I'll admit I hemmed and hawed at first -- oh, I don't know, I've got all this stuff to do at work, and parking will be such a pain, and so on -- but then came to my senses. Honey, it's the Dalai Lama. Let's get our priorities straight here. Besides, how often do you get to leave a note on your office door saying "Gone to see His Holiness, so sorry we missed you"? (And yes, parking was a pain. But you really can't muster up much road rage when you -- and everyone else cruising the lot -- are on your way to see the Dalai Lama.)

The event was a panel discussion about Compassion and Children, and included a slate of academics & non-profit leaders who are doing all kinds of interesting things: teaching parents to cope with the stress a new baby will put on their relationship, restructuring orphanages so children can form emotional attachments with their caregivers, bringing neighborhood babies into elementary schools so kids learn to care for them, etc. Inspiring work, lovely people.

It was interesting to watch them tell His Holiness their stories, often in that funny psychology jargon that describes a 2-year-old on the verge of a temper tantrum as "about to become disorganized." The translator would mutter into the Dalai Lama's ear, attempting to convey the humor and/or poignancy of the situation. His Holiness would laugh or nod or bow, then pause for a moment before delivering a nugget or two of simple wisdom. You could almost see the little wheels in the panelists' heads spinning, trying to incorporate this deep, centered perspective into their own. Or rather, trying to connect it to that deep, centered part of themselves that is at the heart of what they do.

Because it really does all fit together, of course. That deeply engaged struggle to help foster children heal from their traumas or teach parents how to listen to their babies -- like the struggle to save the planet or end the war or whatever your own campaign may be -- that struggle can get so caught up in bureaucracy and data and politics and money that you lose track of the simple truth that brought you to the battle in the first place.

The thing is that when you finally nail down that simple truth that links us all and drives our work, it turns out to be some dorky cliché, usually along the lines of "Children are the future," or "All you need is love." The sort of thing a more well-rested person might dismiss as naive or shallow -- or obvious, for that matter.

But delivered by a smiling monk in a red robe, on a stage full of earnest do-gooders, to a person recently undone by a raisin... these pronouncements carried an unexpected weight. And a grounded feeling which, I'm happy to report, has outlasted the more histrionic insomnia-induced revelations of yesterday.

-- Mikala