When I was nineteen, I woke up one morning, and my eyes were so red and dry, I could not blink without excruciating pain. My eyelids felt like sandpaper, and my eyes felt severely dessicated and raw. I looked in the mirror, and the image horrified me. I had never seen anything like it. “I’m going to go blind!” I lamented. I wanted to rush to the doctor, but I had no medical insurance and no money to pay out of pocket. Feeling helpless, apprehensive, and sorry for myself, I sat on my bed and started to cry. When I finished crying… my eyes were all better. I felt sheepish. The simple solution, in that case, would have been a saline one.
Problems, even the seemingly insurmountable ones, often turn out to have simple solutions, and we make them complicated only because we don’t understand the situation or because we’re accustomed to unsolvable dilemmas. So, we ask the universe for help, but we believe the solution must be extravagant and involved. We “choose the form of the destructor,” to use a phrase from the movie Ghostbusters, and the Stay Puffed Marshmallow Man appears. Not knowing how to untangle ourselves from a web of difficulties, we conjure up an elaborate plan for redemption. The universe, all to eager to offer healing, may just oblige.
Once upon a time, a man fell asleep under a beautiful but strange tree in the fields near a lake. As he slept, he rolled over onto the gnarly roots until his head was propped up against them. When he awoke, a terrible pain filled his head. The agony!
As he was sleeping, he surmised, his skin had absorbed a poisonous chemical from the tree. He went to the library and researched the chemical composition of the tree, but he found no clues to a cure.
The pain grew more intense until he cried out to the cosmos, “Oh universe, what must I do to escape this suffering?” Through his weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth, he received an intuition. He packed a bag and hiked to the furthest mountain. The tradition said that the spirits visited those on the peak and blessed all who traveled there.
When he reached the foot of the great peak, after many days of travel, the air grew thin and cold. He searched for a trail, and finding none, made his way through the thick scratchy trees until he reached the pokey rocks. He shivered and became hungry as a heavy snow fell. His shoes fell apart, but he kept going. “Ouch, ouch, ouch!” he said with each step, but he kept going. He abandoned his bag when he reached a sheer rock wall. He climbed along the side, finding a place to hang on whenever he grew desperate. All the while, the pain in his head grew more debilitating.
Finally, he reached the peak. He knelt on the rocks looking out across the vast landscape and gazed skyward and begged for the help of the great spirits. Suddenly, a small cloud formed above him and began to glow with an otherworldly light. A being of golden light descended slowly from the cloud. She wore garlands of lotus flowers and a necklace of skulls. She held a serpent in one hand and a blade in the other, and a string of strange, emerald symbols encircled her. She stood before the man and, with a third magical hand, pulled a white jar from her shimmering garment.
The man was ecstatic. He took the jar carefully. “What shall I do, oh honored one? Whatever you command!”
“Take two of those and call me in the morning,” she said, “and get yourself a nice pillow. Oh, and take the stairs down, dear. They’re on your right.” She smiled and returned to her cloud. The next morning, the man’s headache was gone.
