at the end of your rope
| When I was a boy, there was a radio DJ in Detroit who was famous for his smooth R & B. He played R&B on a station called WJLB. Not like today’s R&B, but the nourishes-the-soul kind of R&B. If you know what I’m talking about, then you know what I’m talking about. Anyway he would play at night, and his voice was smooth and rich and mellow and if you stayed awake long enough to listen to him, you usually got an earful and soul full of warmth, love, and hope because this guy was on air when Detroit was dying. It was the 1980s and Detroit’s car manufacturing industry was leaving the city by the SUV-full. High labor costs and the competitive advantages of international players caused rapid unemployment throughout the city and state, and as a result, drugs and crime and all the other ugly signs of frustrated poverty became rampant throughout the city.
I recall the gray skies, colourless flat land and the dying city. And I recall that DJ on WJLB. He played hope. He whispered prayers and encouragement and shed light in the ever-growing darkness of the city. I remember what he used to say at the end of his show, “when you reach the end of your rope, tie a knot and hang on.” Those words came back to me as I took a taxi to the nearest Buddhist temple here in Beijing recently. My father has been in and out of the hospital and no one seems to know what to do about his condition, although everything I hear says it is nothing but serious. I’ve never thought about life without my father until these past few days. Lately, I’ve had to force myself to think about life without him and his advice and jokes and temper and devotion. That’s been hard for me to do; he’s always been there. So, with all the doctor’s telling us that he will likely need a life-threatening operation to address his life-threatening condition. I feel as if I’m “at the end of my rope.” So what do I do? What can I do? After trying to rationalize with every tidbit of science I know, I feel that the best I can do for my father and my own sanity is to visit a temple. I know, this is weird for me, but every day I wait for the phone call that tells me Dad will have the operation that he likely won’t survive. Every day I am waiting for the dreaded news and the news could come at any time, at any minute. It’s enough to drive the most rational among us to visit a temple, honestly. So, I go. It’s almost degrading, really, because temples in Beijing are not respected at all. The authorities and this generation of people have made sure that anything culturally valuable is either passe or a laughing joke. But as I kneel down in front of this giant old statue, I see the stone floor is worn, and as I offer my cold drink to the lifeless deity, I bow my head not at all out of respect for the clay statue in front of me, but for the ideas that its originator left for humanity. After all, Buddha, like many others, gave the world some really cool ideas that have helped many people to solve problems and better understand the world–which is not so unlike my father. I could just as well be kowtowing my Father. But as I kneel down, I cry a little because I have nothing else to do but sit melancholy in front of a lump of baked clay. I cry because I realize that I am absolutely powerless over my father’s suffering and demise and that hurts so badly that I come to a Buddhist temple to keep myself from going crazy with anxiety. I don’t feel much better after I rise from my brief bow and sentiment to the Buddhist statue, but I know that–in my heart–all I can do is this. All I have left to do is hope and resort to something that has given reason to humanity. I’m at the end of my rope, and the best I can do is to tie a knot and hang on. |