Suffern

Again – Chapter 1 – JohnA Passaro

The wound is the place
Where the light enters you

Rumi

November 22^nd, 2013

Four and a quarter years ago, while I was on my way to visit with my daughter Jessica at the Helen Hayes Brain Rehabilitation Center upstate, I drove past a sign that read:

“You Are Now Entering the Town of Suffern”

The funny part is on the way back I never saw the sign that said:

“You Are Now Leaving the Town of Suffern”

That is because I never left.

I have been in suffering every day for the last 1,550 days.

There is a fight inside of me that occurs everyday, between the part that just wants this ride to stop, and the wrestler in me that is willing and able to take an unbelievable amount of physical and mental punishment for the ultimate reward.

The odds of achieving this reward are so minuscule that sanity is no longer my friend.

Luckily, the wrestler in me always wins.

My friend Scott Green, the Head Wrestling Coach at Wyoming Seminary said:

“Life is 90% reason, rationality, discipline and organization.

You need to live your life that way.

That last 10% is a leap of faith, an emotional connection, an irrational belief.

That last 10% makes no sense at all.

But the truth is, nothing worth having and nothing worth accomplishing, happens without that last part.

You have to live in that world to do something great.”

I have been living exclusively in that world for almost five years.

I am trying with every sinew of my soul to achieve something great.

At times, it feels like I am.

At other times, it feels like I am not.

Most of the time, it just feels like Groundhogs Day, over and over again.

I keep filling my mind with success stories and I keep researching great people, trying to make sure that I have enough inspirational gas in my tank to make this whole trip.

I keep pursuing my dream, my dual goal to “care for and cure Jess” and to “live and love life.”

That is the reward of living in that 10%, the ability to keep plugging along as if great strides have been seen.

That is my formula, to live in that 10%; it is the only formula I know.

So each day I win another round of my inner fight and I execute my formula of time, perseverance and an unwavering faith and belief, while taking and absorbing all punishment in the process.

As each new day begins, I feel like a Whack-A-Mole, sticking my head out of the hole time and time again, willing and able to take the shot in the head with the hopes that one day, I will stick my head out, and I will no longer have to get a grief concussion.

Until then, I will leap into that 10% of life with an emotional commitment and an irrational belief that something great is about to occur.

But first, I must shake this nagging feeling that something is seriously wrong.