musingsonwomenshealth.com

Reflections on 40 years as a doctor in Women's Health

The art of finding the mind’s construction in the face


During Covid, I found that I sometimes had the most interesting conversations when I didn’t mean to. Most people hear, but fewer listen unless you make eye contact with them; this was often difficult when I was standing in those little socially distanced footsteps painted on the floor of the grocery store checkout lines and only people’s backs were turned toward me… You cannot face someone with your back.

I hadn’t really thought very much about backs until those early days of the pandemic -after all, my own back is the one item of my body that only others can see. Or so I thought, until I happened upon an essay that pointed out a far more important area to which each and every one of us is also blind: our own heads -or more properly, our own faces.[i] And the mind which looks out through the face, has no shape, no colour, it is not a ‘thing’ like other things out there; it sees only what it sees and without seeing itself, it remains a void -a blank space- until it reaches out. It is its chance to gather itself before it reacts… Before it allows its mouth to speak. At least I think that’s what the essay was suggesting -it was all a bit confusing, to tell the truth.

At any rate, I wasn’t thinking about faces that day in the grocery line, because there was a lengthy delay in the queue ahead of me -there seemed to be a dispute with the cashier by a man paying for his groceries. Apart from him, there were only backs in front of me, the closest of which was quietly fidgeting, politely impatient at the delay.

“I wonder why he’s being so bloody rude,” I mumbled through my face mask, assuming the nearby back could not hear me.

But its shoulders turned around, almost on cue, and strafed me with the eyes on the head they were supporting. “The poor man couldn’t find his credit card, and apparently he brought no cash with him to the store,” its face -in this case that of a woman- explained to me.

I made a concerted effort not to roll my eyes in disbelief, and I think she noticed.

Her eyes hardened for a moment and then softened. “These pandemic times are difficult for all of us so I don’t think we should judge people too harshly… and he does seem to be quite an old man. I feel sorry for him.”

I regretted my hasty words, and smiled at her beneath my mask. “You’re right, you know,” I said, suddenly remembering the essay I’d read. “My mind sometimes forgets,” I added, and immediately regretted saying it.

Her pupils narrowed briefly. “Forgets what?”

“That it isn’t a thing…” I shouldn’t have said that either; I hadn’t fully understood the article I’d read. Still, I could tell she was smiling, even behind her mask.

“Whatever do you mean?” she said, obviously amused at my answer.

I felt trapped. “Well… Uhmm, my head is something I can never see -except in a mirror, of course- but even in a mirror I’ll never be able to see my mind. It isn’t a ‘thing’ like my head either, so it’s sort of two orders removed…” I realized I was going far beyond what I’d understood from the essay.

She nodded, the Duchenne wrinkles around her eyes deepening. “Are you by any chance referring to the philosopher Douglas Harding’s idea in his book ‘On Having No Head’?”

The name sounded familiar so I nodded, my blush no doubt obvious above my mask.

She turned her whole body around to examine me, looking even more surprised than her smile had revealed. “My god, I used to teach that… ‘Zen and the Rediscovery of the Obvious’ was the rest of the title, I think.” She reached for her mask, and I could tell she was about to remove it, when she thought better of it. “You’ve been doing some heavy reading; my students seemed to enjoy it as well, you know, although I never intended to give them an introductory course on Zen…”

“You’re a teacher?” I asked, happy to change the subject before I blundered even further over my head.

She nodded -somewhat wistfully, I thought. “Professor of Philosophy at the University actually -well Professor Emerita now, I suppose. But you never really retire from Philosophy, I don’t think…” Her voice trailed off as she glanced over her shoulder at the still-unmoving line.

There were two people behind the counter now -one was the manager, I guess- and he was trying to calm the cashier down. From the way he was waving his arms, he seemed to be on the side of the old man.

The professor turned back to me and shrugged. “The cashier likely also forgot that her mind wasn’t a ‘thing’.” She sighed and I could see her mask moving in and out as she breathed. “But she’s still young… plenty of time to learn.”

Even so, I was pretty sure she’d italicized the way she said the word ‘thing’ to assure me that although she may have thought I’d misinterpreted Harding, she wasn’t about to correct me like one of her students. Foolishly, I thought I’d test the waters of the essay again. “But perhaps her confusion with the old man is her ‘true nature’…” I had no idea what I meant; it was just that I remembered the essay was trying to explain a quick way to discover one’s ‘true nature’ without the need to meditate for a lifetime.

The woman’s eyes sought mine again, but this time they seemed to twinkle with amusement. “Perhaps she was just concerned about having to deal with a customer who couldn’t pay.”

I shrugged; it seemed like an appropriate response to suggest that I understood, but that I’d had some minor difficulties with her premise -or was it her thesis? I never took logic in university. Anyway, the shrug was perhaps a weak admission of an argumentative stalemate, I suppose. I mean, what else could I do when I hadn’t the slightest idea about what a ‘true nature’ was…

The woman examined me for a moment and then her mask suggested another sigh. “I don’t think I ever really understood what Harding was getting at either…”

I nodded, and attempted to twinkle back at her. Her students must have loved her, I bet.

[i] https://psyche.co/ideas/to-experience-zen-like-awakening-try-going-the-headless-way?

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gozzter

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