author, writer, poet, speaker
Wayne Allen LeVine
The Last Attack
As a child I was stricken with severe allergies and asthma, which kept me from having, holding, tasting, touching and smelling a rich array of life’s true blessings, such as trees, grass, most plants, many types of flowers, and a rich variety of foods. And keeping a pet – especially a dog or a cat – was completely out of the question. All of my childhood doctors were in total agreement, with regard to what I should and should not do: I needed to avoid everything I was allergic to, come in every Saturday morning for my weekly allergy shot and most of all – remember to remain sedentary.
“Do not exert yourself,” my doctor told me. “No running, climbing or strenuous exercise – which is likely to trigger a dangerous attack, that could, in fact, be fatal.”
I did my best to avoid most of the things that I was told I was allergic to and continued taking the shots – which I began to suspect were worthless. But remain sedentary? Not on your life or my own. I repeatedly disregarded that not so sage advice, which emphasized the importance of maintaining a less than active lifestyle – in other words; a childhood void of exertion. “Would you like us to give you a note that would excuse you from gym?” An offer that I always declined, each and every time my doctor or nurse was inclined to ask. They had no clue – no awareness whatsoever that they were asking me to abandon my saving grace. I played hard, ran everywhere, rode my bike like a demon, swam every summer and trained in gymnastics year-round. I became one of the top gymnasts in my grammar school and also set the 50-, 60-, and 100-yard dash records. At the age of eleven, I told my parents that I would no longer be taking the allergy shots each week – after several years of weekly injections, I was now convinced that they weren’t only worthless, but a deterrent to the wellness I aspired to – a subjective decision based on my own intuition, rather than any information I had read or heard or had been told by anyone I knew at that time in my life.
I told my parents that I would cure myself; that I didn’t need the shots and that they were, in fact, not helping. My parents asked me if I might want to talk to another kind of doctor – they didn’t say psychiatrist, but that’s what they meant. And even though they were doubtful, I got them to agree to a trial period. “We’ll see how well you do without them,” they said.
But I wasn’t through. I begged, pleaded and finally convinced them to get a dog – a furry little Pekinese that we all grew to love – and I began to immerse myself in all the things that used to make me sick (or had been told would make me sick). I cut the grass for neighbors who didn’t know I had been told repeatedly to stay away from lawns. I woke up and smelled the roses – literally. I climbed trees and savored those heretofore forbidden fruits – such as strawberries, which doctors said “could possibly be fatal.”
I don’t remember my first asthma attack, but I vividly remember my last. I was eleven years old; it was a humid, hot summer day in Chicago, and I was running wild across the savanna – running hard and fast through the African jungle – in reality, the alleys behind our house. There were many beasts and potential predators I needed to outrun, some of which were real. Sometimes while playing hard and running fast, especially on hot, sticky days, my lungs would start to swell and squeeze off my air supply. That day was no different, in that regard. I decided to leave the jungle, albeit, reluctantly, and return home to rest.
I came home to an empty house, a true blessing that allowed for undisturbed, quiet focus – the kind of stillness required for the deep awareness, wherein I found my cure.
As I lay on my parents’ bed – mesmerized by the shinny silver bolt in the center of the fan that stood at the foot of their bed, I began to find my center too. I looked into the mirror of metal in the middle of the vortex – sharp steel blades spinning and whirling like a metallic dervish, creating a quiet, steady hum. I lay still – centered and relaxed enough to listen deeply to the hum inside my chest – and to the chorus, and the percussion. I was calm enough to hear the orchestra inside myself; flutes, horns and primitive whistles produced by tiny puffs of needed air struggling through a very narrow passageway. I was as calm as I’d ever been in the midst of an asthma attack – this time; for the first time, it didn’t feel like an attack, but rather a private concert in my honor, which I felt compelled to listen to. I heard primeval chimes and sacred snare drums – the rapid, rhythmic crackling sounds of swollen lungs that blocked my air supply.
I was so enthralled by the music inside my body that I forgot to be afraid of my inability to breathe – I was aware, though not fearful. I knew that very little air was getting through; less, perhaps, than at any other time I could remember. Then a dazzling realization came to life, accompanied by the chorus in my chest. I remember thinking “the little bit of air that is getting through, is enough to sustain me. The little bit is all I need – the little bit, is enough! And with that thought and the awareness it carried, suddenly my lungs opened fully and completely. That thought touched every living cell of my body; echoed through all the halls of my psyche and danced joyfully in the center of my soul.
I didn’t know it at the time – it took years for me to finally realize that, it was, in fact, my last attack.
- From INSIGHTS of an ORDINARY MAN
What Will You Do If You Don’t Win The Lottery?
What will you do if you don’t win the lottery? That’s a question we tend not to ask ourselves or pose to others. And why should we? Where’s the fun and excitement in a question like that? How can we be expected to locate our dreams and make our lengthy list of extravagant things we intend to buy – if and when our quick-pick or psychically selected numbers turn over in order to make us into instant millionaires.
And that is precisely why we need to ask – not what we’ll buy if we win, but what we plan to do if we don’t? Because what we do is always the deciding and the defining factor in our lives. Shakespeare said; “Action is eloquence” and Goethe told us to “Be bold and the mighty forces will come to our aid”. And Descartes should have said; “I act, therefore I am” but apparently failed to. We may proclaim that we exist because we think, ponder, and continue to fantasize about the always and forever better life. Although, thought without action, when action is needed, tends to be little more than an intellectual exercise in futility. Thinking without acting, rarely, if ever leads us to any deep sense of fulfillment. Of course, the opposite approach – acting without thinking, tends to produce dangerously unfavorable results for many people, much of the time.
I didn’t intend to turn this into a philosophical treatise about buying lottery tickets, however, I am a philosopher, as well as a poet, and so what else could it be? And now the question has become: “To buy or not to buy” a lottery ticket? This is one of the questions that I answered for myself more than a decade ago. There is a fundamental difference between being and buying, which I intend to explore throughout the framework of this brief essay, or bold vignette, depending upon its length and your perception.
Eleven years ago I was struggling to maintain a life of mediocrity – doing my damndest to try to fit in where I really didn’t belong. There is nothing rare or exceptional about a situation like that. In fact, most of the people I know are living their own version of it now. And having been there myself, I remain sensitive to the struggle to get out of it, when we know in our heart and soul we truly need to. I was there – long enough to have earned the insights that I wish now to share with those who may want to make use of them. And I don’t have to think very long or look very far to realize there are plenty of them.
More and more people are working longer and harder for less than what they were earning a decade ago, when we adjust for the rate of inflation – driven by a deeply misguided bottom-line mindset, fueled by fear and shaped by greed as much as anything. And there are plenty of facts, figures, and statistical data to support the opinions, beliefs, and faulty notions on all sides. The numbers are widely available – elsewhere; in other books, printed reports, newspapers, and in both print and on-line magazines, but not here. I prefer to speak from my own area of expertise, which is philosophy, and the poetry that emerges from my personal experience. I am, after all, the world’s foremost expert on my very own personal experience, and I will continue to draw from that.
I bought my last lottery ticket around eleven years ago, while attempting to figure out how to extricate myself from the work routine, which at that time was less than to my liking. I was searching for a way out – a healthy way in which to make a legitimate and significant change. And it wasn’t as if things were really awful in my life – in fact, there were a number of things that I thought to be wonderful back then. And still do to this day. Still and all, there was something deeply fundamental to my being that was missing. And when we are less than satisfied with our daily routine, there is a tendency to believe we can buy our way out of it, and spend our way in to a better one; which is not entirely true, nor entirely false. The thing is, most of the time, when we sense that something deep is missing, the thing we need and want the most, isn’t something we can purchase, even if we were to have chosen the winning lotto numbers, making us into an instant multi-millionaire.
So did I have the winning ticket, with a $40,000,000 pay day? Did my numbers line up eleven years ago, permitting me to make the change I felt the need to make? I won’t say yet. I’ll let you wonder – I’ll allow you to guess, for now, though I promise to tell you before the end of this vignette.
So there I was, holding that little ticket in my hand – wondering what I would do if I won? Where would I want to live, if I could afford to live nearly anywhere? What kind of car or cars would I buy? How much would I be willing to spend on fine art to hang on the many walls within the numerous rooms of my new home? And once I have my new home, filled with fine antiques and masterful art to ponder freely and appreciate fully – and my shinny new cars, and a thousand or more artfully-bound first addition books, arranged by subject; filling in the custom-made mahogany shelves in my exquisite home library and the list could go on and on adinfinitum. But the question is: what to do? No matter what we have or don’t have, what to do remains the real core question we keep coming back to.
So what did I really want to do? When your imagination seems to be in suspended animation, and your creative mind has been sentenced to solitary confinement; surrounded by the noise of screaming prisoners – thinking about the things you might do if you did win the lottery, can be a useful trick to loosen the lock on the cell that you’ve put yourself in. And once I felt free enough to imagine some of the things I would acquire, if I could afford them, the restraints I had placed upon an array of bold and bright possibilities, began to vanish with the afternoon wind. I knew what I wanted to do – what I needed to do, and what I was determined to do no matter what! I want to write. I need to write. And I will write if the numbers line up or if they don’t. Win or lose, the answer was the same . . . I am a writer, and I will write.
And once again, with that lottery ticket still in my hand, I felt compelled to ask myself; what will I do if I don’t win the lottery? And now that I knew, it was rather easy for me to answer. Then I asked myself another question, which was: “Do I really want to win? In my own heart of hearts, did I sincerely hope to be holding the winning ticket? Did I really want to join the ranks of instant lottery winners? Or would I much prefer to earn my own fortune as a direct result of my full commitment to the work I was destined to do? And my true and honest answer – mono-e-mono, was: No. I really don’t.
I didn’t want to win something that could possibly rob me of the need to fulfill my fate. I didn’t want to be given anything that could lessen my desire to dig deeply enough to discover my own understanding. And as I say that now, I can hear the masses chanting in unison: “The hell with understanding!” Just give me the $40,000,000. And I could easily understand such a chant – and at other times might have been tempted to join in. But on that memorable day, around eleven years ago, when I asked myself in earnest if I really wanted to win the lottery? My answer that day was: No. I really don’t. And I’ve been winning nearly every single solitary day ever since!
I am a winner each and every morning that I wake with gratitude and eagerness to continue. I leap out of bed – literally, from the foot of my bed – directly into the day before me; I leap forward with a rich, unbridled sense of enthusiasm to carry on with the work I love, within this life that I’ve been given. “One learns by doing a thing; for though you think you know it, you have no certainty until you try.” That is something Sophocles said, somewhere around 440 BCE, and it remains relevant to this day.
So was I a winner that fated day eleven years ago? Yes! I most certainly was. Did the numbers on my lottery ticket all line up in order to make me an instant multi-millionaire? No they did not. Am I doing what I love and living true to my own understanding? Yes I am; absolutely, without a doubt. Well, I do face doubts from time to time, though they never really threaten to do me in. I face them openly, whenever they come around, for the sake of deeper certainty. And now that my good fortune and yours are connected by the threads of fate that run through all of humanity, I want to encourage you to ask yourself: What will I do if I don’t win the lottery? And when you find the answer, write it down, and follow it faithfully – all the way to the riches you deserve.
- From INSIGHTS of an ORDINARY MAN