Music of the Unquiet Mind

Through Cage and his take on Zen philosophy, I have made a truce with my O.C.D. I recognize that it is integral to who I am and have come to accept myself, warts and all. Obsessive-compulsives are, not surprisingly, perfectionists. Yet, I have learned to relinquish the grand illusion of the goal and relish, instead, the unfolding of the process. Cage’s highly forgiving definition of error, as “simply a failure to adjust immediately from a preconception to an actuality,” has helped temper my self-judgmental parameters of right and wrong, all or nothing. (...)

O.C.D.’s most salient feature is its viselike hold on the mind, imbuing unwanted thoughts with a ferocious, pitiless tenacity. Cage’s Zen-inspired text “Lecture on Nothing” is balm to an obsessive-compulsive: “Regard it as something seen momentarily, as though from a window while traveling … at any instant, one may leave it, and whenever one wishes one may return to it. Or you may leave it forever and never return to it, for we possess nothing. …Anything therefore is a delight (since we do not possess it) and thus need not fear its loss.”

Fear of loss rules the life of an obsessive-compulsive — fear of loss of control, fear of loss in both physical and metaphysical realms (paradoxically, the fear of losing worthwhile thoughts), and the ultimate fear — fear over the loss of time when consumed by compulsive rituals; I live in a constant race with time to make up for the time lost to the dictates of the disease.

by Margaret Leng Tan, NY Times | Read more:
Image: Karen Barbour
repost ( ..."I would prefer not to wear holes in the carpet of my mind.")