Meditations in the air
The Narrowing It began with anxiety. The word itself comes from angina—narrowing. Anxiety is a bottleneck, a constriction. It is like the birth canal: tight, dark, suffocating. Yet when we pass through it, what awaits is relief, peace, and the opening of a new world. Even pain instructs, if we let it. The task is not to recoil, but to listen, to observe. On the airplane, I felt claustrophobic, pressed in by the cabin walls and the closed air. It reminded me of a tragedy—a medical student who died while exploring a cave, trapped in a passage as narrow as a birth canal. The body suffocates, the mind suffocates, when it cannot see a way through. The Heart in Its Masks The heart, too, can narrow. A disheartened heart is ugly. An indifferent heart turns cold. A possessive heart creates anger. An assaultive heart wounds. A demanding heart repels. A judgmental heart hardens. And yet, even when told it is wrong, the heart feels pierced. We live caught in craving and aversion, plea...