The Creative Jump

To begin, though not necessarily at the beginning, but perhaps where it all started, I believe. Since there is so much to tell, it is probably better to tell it a little bit at a time. It makes remembering easier. So, this particular beginning occurred very late at night. I was almost asleep when they came for me. At the time, I was six and a half and had been at Fordham Hospital for almost three weeks. The nurses held the rolling stretcher as I climbed on from my warm bed not knowing why they had come for me so late at night. I was wheeled down the long, bright hallways with the stretcher’s wobbly wheels echoing off the walls. I was nervous. It was a route I had traveled on previous occasions though never at night. In the last week, I had been feeling much better. No more headaches or fever. I really did not want to go to the bright, cold room that I had been in before. The nurses were stern looking, and they did not smile like the ones I knew. When we entered the familiar room, I saw a new doctor who had a strange looking smile. I felt uncomfortable. I became anxious and a bit afraid. Nothing seemed as it had been before. I said I was feeling much better to the doctor. But he did not listen to me. He started talking about how this was a necessary procedure while the nurses prepared things including the big needle. He ignored my comments about feeling better as he gave the nurses instructions and told them what he wanted done. His tone was harsh and unfriendly. It was cold in the room, and I was beginning to shake as they removed the covering sheet and pulled open the back of my gown. My back was exposed to the bright lights and the ice-cold room. I kept saying over and over again that I was feeling better. I did not want another needle in my back. Fear and stress took over as I began to plead with them to take me back to my bed. Each time the doctor touched me I squirmed and became more emotional. I could see the huge needle in his hand as he tried to maneuver me into a stilled position. I became more and more upset and started crying louder: “I want the other doctor...I want the other doctor.” It was all I could think of saying in my fear and outrage. The doctor directed the two nurses to hold me down. It had not been like this before; this was different. I was crying hysterically now and saying, “This is not the way...this is not the way. I was curled before!” With the nurses holding my legs and shoulders down against the table so I could not wiggle or move, the doctor said, “Be still,” and inserted the needle into the lower part of my spine. The pain immediately shot through my back and head. I never felt such pain before. I screamed. I kept screaming long after the needle had been withdrawn. My face was on fire as my body shook and throbbed. My mind dropped into a distant place where everything outside of me did not register. I was wounded. I tumbled deeply into my own pain. I was covered with a sheet and lifted onto the rolling stretcher. My head was spinning as the nurses wheeled me back to my bed. I felt pain throughout my body. My back was now hot. They had to lift me onto my bed, because I could no longer move myself. I was again raging with fever. I could not move. In an instant, my life was forever changed. I was no longer whole. A scar had been deeply cut into my psyche. I was no longer a child who was innocent and unafraid. I had experienced the suddenness and cruelty of disruptive forces. As a result of one misplaced needle, I did not walk for the next four years. My life had been violated and altered. This is the kind of beginning that can drown you. It can summon nightmares and monologs of self-pity and vocal outcries of “Why did it happen to me?” But life is not interested in your complaints and wails at the heavens. It is only interested in growth and living, in moving matter; however, that takes place. I could have curled up in my isolation and rejected whatever life there was about me. Fortunately, the advantage I had was that I was a child and did not totally grasp that this was not what life was usually about. I somehow accepted my new environment. At first, it was a hospital bed among many hospital beds. And then, after a year, it was my own bed in my parents’ three room apartment. Many things had happened by that time, but that can be explored later. We cannot always control our beginnings, but we can examine any of our beginnings to gain greater insight. Beginnings are always significant. It is one of the reasons we need to pay attention to them. They often contain lessons that we need to learn. Beginnings present tension and new challenges. No matter how many times you have begun other ventures; when it is new, it is hard to get started. It can be frustrating, annoying, and time consuming. Yet, at some point, we must begin if we are to overcome poverty, illness, current circumstances, or limitations. We must reach out and explore. Sever the knot that holds us to our past, or to our comfort zone. It is part of our nature to explore, to seek new horizons. And yet many of us hesitate, postpone, and do anything else, except begin. And beginning is what we all need to do each day whether it is to look for a new job or tell someone that we love them. So how do you begin? How do you overcome the inertia of regularity, of an unexpected tragedy, or of the comfort of a particular mindset? It is by nurturing and developing your curiosity, a force that can overcome hesitation through its nature of wondering, imagining, and envisioning. We are all prone to avoiding new directions, new jobs, new environments, and new ways of doing things. However, we all have within us the curiosity that can overcome the obstacles inherent in beginnings. Curiosity has been the mental energy that caused our ancestors to explore new places, build new structures, and originate new possibilities. It is a gift that we were born with.