Poison or Medicine...
Perhaps the greatest gift we can extend to another…
One day-a very ordinary day, in fact- a thought drifted into my mind...
"When you think about it, every plant in nature can be made into a poison or a medicine...all depending on the way you work with it."
What a curious thought…
It just came, unbidden. I had to stop and consider the idea.
In my early years, I wanted to be a doctor, psychiatrist or, failing that, a pharmacist. However, my early exposure to hospitals, pre-med and psych students left me skeptical and unsettled. I felt that our system was more about making money than helping people. Fortunately I set it aside…
Not long after, I was living on Cape Breton Island. I was increasingly drawn toward herbs and natural medicine. The local people lived as we had 100 yrs. ago. They had a great working knowledge of herbs, plants and old-fashioned ways to doctor themselves and their farm animals.
It was fascinating to learn how to make a toothbrush from a pine twig, encourage a cough with an ice-cold beer or to quell seasickness with a few sips of room temperature beer.
"Slish,” a Welsh concoction of drinkable oatmeal, honey, cream and whiskey, was a surefire way to ward off virtually any impending illness.
They used various plants to dye their wool, make wine, cure their ills and treat injuries.
Getting back to the thought that had drifted in...
So it was interesting to entertain the subject. How would one plant yield both poison and medicine? I realized that it was all in how the plant was handled! Really remarkable things came to light. Most early medicines started as plant remedies.
Digitalis, for instance, with its delicate purple flowers was used as both a poison and a heart medicine. It was also used to treat burns and wounds, as well as for treating asthma. There are many similar examples. For the next couple of weeks, I researched and considered the statement.
I had to agree...it was abundantly true. After a while the inquiry drifted off to the sidelines.
Then, some weeks later, another thought drifted in on the heels of that idea
"...and the same is true for life's experiences."
That was unexpected.... It had impact!
How could that be? Of course, I didn't understand it at first. But the realization dawned on me over time...
It was a wonderful teaching! The more I thought about the implications, the clearer it became.
I thought, for instance, of a middle-aged woman whose husband had left her for a much younger woman. Everyone knows a woman like that...or several.
It's a horribly painful experience! You're stuck with the situation. Sucker-punched! Unable to change the outcome. "Betrayed and tossed aside after all I did for him?!"
It could not have come at a worse time in life.
The response?
Well...there are not too many options. One woman rages, another cowers or collapses. Another will find a way to pick up her pieces and get on with life.
The woman who rages beyond healthy bounds inevitably poisons herself in many ways…
She becomes a prisoner of her own emotions. She is losing precious energy that she needs for her survival. Then she inevitably goes on to poison family and friends, coworkers and associates. She draws everyone into her misery and rage.
Eventually, the 'thing' takes on a life of its own. She is blind, not only with rage, but she is blind to the damage she brings to herself and her world.
The same dynamic can occur when death takes someone in the wrong way or time. The aggrieved person may rage against God, the medical establishment and the like. A futile rage that smolders on for years. They have made poison out of their experience. What will be the outcome?
Then there are the ones that manage to move through and beyond the rage and victim trap. After the initial shock and tears subside, they take inventory of their new reality.
They will likely need to deal with the practical issues of finances, home, family and friends, an uncertain future.
How will they see themselves and place themselves in this new scenario?
Public and private issues. All must be dealt with. Strength must be found somehow. At each stage, a decision is made. A decision that will help define their future.
Will they make poison or medicine? They have it in their power to make either one...
We can learn from what we observe in other people’s experiences…
Having seen what poison can do to a person, a family, a community, a culture…
Seeing the terrible price that is paid in keeping it alive and how it eventually devours the one who hates, I knew I had to find another way when life tragedies struck.
There is a right use of every emotion…a time and a place, a season, even. We cannot and should not deny anger, rage and hate, but it cannot be blind or run unchecked.
At a point, the season must change. Let it be medicine…and not poison.
There is such a thing as a peaceable end to a friendship or a relationship or even a marriage.
I remember in Turkey, where things can be quite complex and unworkable, they had a saying when all else failed. Some things will never resolve, but, at the end of the day: “Let it be peace.”
“Let it be peace.”
There will be loose ends, unfinished arguments, lack of closure, blame, hurtful words and memories, but “Let it be peace.”
Cry the last tears, write a letter (and don’t send it), get it all out of you… At the end “Let it be peace.”
Turn the page…
I will never forget a dream that instructed me along those lines…
Someone who should have been the closest of friends had a hidden side. She went on to cause me grief (and no small harm) in a way that no one else ever had. I was oppressed and unable to defend myself in any way.
In the dream…
I was standing in front of a giant chalkboard. I was writing all my complaints (she did this!, she said that!) I was filling every square inch of that board. It was a lucid dream. I felt everything…all the misery and helplessness, the unfairness of it all, etc.
I was at a breaking point with all of it. I wrote and wrote and I wrote!
Then, when I had filled every space…a hand appeared off to the edge of the scene…a larger-than-life hand… The Hand was bearing a giant eraser.
The implication was clear.
Erase it…all of it.
I was aghast at the thought!!! “What do you mean…erase it?!”
Silence waiting on the other end…
“But she’s going to keep doing it…all over again, I wailed!”
More expectant silence…
I finally took the eraser, weeping bitterly, and went to work, knowing that I would soon fill the chalkboard again with all her fresh assaults. And I somehow knew that I would be asked to erase it all again…and again.
This made no sense!!!
Unfairness from on High!! It felt like the ultimate betrayal.
“But I had done nothing wrong! I tried to help her at every turn! You KNOW that!”
But it was just me and the chalkboard eraser for a few more rounds.
The dream ended. I was exhausted. Beaten.
A couple of days later, I bumped into a Marcus Aurelius quote.
“Reject your sense of injury and the injury itself disappears.”
A piece of the puzzle had been given…
I would learn to reject my sense of injury again and again (and again) until it disappeared.
And it did!
A few months later, she was at my door…unannounced. Caught by surprise, I looked at her…with a blank slate. A new-born encounter. No weight, no history, no pain.
It changed the energy between us. I had dropped all the weight of hurt, anger and blame. The charge of that energy was gone.
I saw her as the person I liked on the 1st day that we met. She also was handed a clean slate…
Perhaps the greatest gift we can extend to another…
There is a kind of simplicity to it…
I remember using it with Joy, who had been locked in a marriage best described as the ‘dance of death’ for 60 yrs. Her husband had betrayed her in every way possible for decades. No hope of reform.
The poison this had generated over the decades is easily imagined.
It manifested eventually as breast cancer.
Joy refused chemo…she wanted to get to the bottom of it. And that’s what was shown to her.
There was only one way out…and that was for Joy to forgive him along the same lines. It took months to even approach the idea. I was with her when she took the awful bitter medicine that morning. (she said the words…she forgave him out loud)
It broke her in a similar fashion…
Neither of us was prepared for what happened next…
Her husband changed. Profoundly. Without a word being spoken or explanation given.
They had been locked in that energy for as long as they could remember. When she dismembered the energy, it was as though he had been untied...unbound from all their heavy history. (women can do that to a man). He was free to change. He softened, no longer struggling under all the weight. Their last years together were warm and loving…unimaginable, but we all were witness to it.
When given the choice, we can make poison of life’s circumstances, or, as I like to observe, we can make a heck of a lot of medicine instead.
Take care in handling life’s difficulties. The poison or the medicine you make affects you and everyone in your circle… Your children, your readers (who are like your children), your friends and onlookers. Your communities…your world.
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