A few days later, from the balcony of our lodge overlooking the marshlands of Bodega Bay, we asked ourselves: if we had known that the train would arrive a full seven hours late, would we have toughed it out? Were we just old softies who couldn't wait more than three hours to fulfill a commitment and have an adventure in the process? When I had to write the email to the opera company telling them that I wasn't going to make it, the words sounded pretty lame: we couldn't wait any longer. It sounded really wimpy and lightweight when stated that way. Or was it the uncertainty that made us bail at 3 a.m.? Was it possible that, if someone had had a crystal ball and had said "Train 14 to Seattle will be arriving at 7 a.m." that we could have figured out a way to make it work?
I think we could have. Even though it would have been impossible in reality for anyone to know when it would have arrived... I do think that knowing what we were up against would have made the whole situation a lot more manageable. I could have put down the phone and stopped obsessively checking the status app. We could have made ourselves a bit more comfortable in the truck and actually gotten several hours of sleep, maybe. We could even conceivably have rented a cheap hotel room nearby and gotten a few hours in a real bed. It would still have taken a toll, for sure, and my poor toxin-ridden body would certainly have been massively uncomfortable... but I think we would have figured out a way to do it.
And there was the dream. Boy, we wanted that train trip so badly we
could taste it. We really were very attached to the whole idea of a
train ride and had been fantasizing about it for months. Giving up on
that possibility felt like losing out on a trip to Disneyland when
you're eight. Or having your parents say you could not get that puppy
you had been holding every day after school at the pet store. The slap
in the face of reality was brutal. You mean... we looked at each
other... after all this...we might not get to even ride on the train?
On the other hand, it could not be disputed that the dream was turning a bit towards the nightmare. Looking forward into the new version of the dream, we would get on the train after 5 a.m., sleep for ... how long?... in the neato roommette. But then it'd be daylight. And breakfast would be served between certain hours... and so we'd drag ourselves to breakfast and sit and look at all the other bleary passengers, some of whom had actually been on the train when the accident happened. What would we talk about? Would the mood be one of carefree abandon? Uh... probably not, actually. My guess is that the mood would be grim, irritable, or (at best) just totally leaden with fatigue. The number of hours we left late would also indicate the number of hours we'd get in late, and the following day would be also spent playing catch up. So...even though I'd like to make the case that we were both fairly evolved in paying attention to the present moment sensory reality we were experiencing and honoring it... I have to admit that we were both pretty convinced by this point that our future moment sensory reality (should we continue with the train plan) was going to suck bigtime too.
Bailing meant saying good-bye to all of it, the good and the bad. Bailing meant letting people down. And
feeling weak and somewhat stupid... both for thinking up this dumb idea
in the first place, and then giving up before knowing exactly
how horrible our life could get.
In the end, I think it was the not knowing that made it impossible to continue. It was the extreme fatigue, at 3 a.m, and the knowledge that we would have at least two more hours to go...and even that looking doubtful. As Roger said, we were like frogs being slowly boiled to death. If we had known the true situation, we could have either accepted our fate, or jumped out of the pot sooner.
Like most frogs, we were extraordinarily glad we jumped. When I looked at the app the following day and saw that we would have been sitting at the station until 7 a.m, we both heaved a huge sigh of disbelief and relief. Can you imagine, we said. Another four hours of that? Unreal.
We got our money, we ended up having an incredibly lovely time wandering around Sacramento for a day and then driving through the wine country and staying a couple of nights at the Bodega Bay Lodge... but stories about other people being relaxed and happy and eating scrumptious meals are just not as compelling as zombie apocalypses, so I'll spare you.
I have two points to make:
One. As a great Vulcan philosopher once said: "After a time, you may find that having is not so pleasing a thing after all as wanting. It is not logical, but it is often true." We wanted the train ride badly, so badly that the wanting overrode all possible logic (up to a point). The wanting was almost definitely going to be more pleasing than the having, once (or if) it ever arrived. At a certain point (about 3 a.m., to be exact) we were forced to pay attention to that fact.
Two. Once we started to detach from that wanting, a whole world of possibilities opened up to us. We were suddenly free and easy and far more relaxed. Somehow we had to just let go and see the situation for what it was (i.e., totally fucked) and then make a decision based on that, rather than based on a whirlwind of conjecture, fear, need to live up to other people's expectations, etc.
And yes, it's highly possible that a year ago, pre-diagnosis, I would have toughed it out. And it may have worked out fine. But we were glad we didn't tough it out one more minute. We were pushing the river, as the saying goes. We were pushing to make something work that really didn't want to work. And the second we gave up and acknowledged that we just couldn't do it any more... it gave way and softened for us. We became the owners of our lives again. Possibilities again became endless.
When things started pushing back at us, it turned out it was for a reason. Maybe we weren't meant to go up to Seattle after all. Maybe we were meant to shut up and relax for awhile. In a place where there was beauty, and nature, and not much else to do.
I have stop for a moment and acknowledge that man. The man that night, who decided to do something that probably broke the hearts of everyone who knew him. He stopped a train full of 200 people. Those people waited in the train, with far less freedom than we had up in Sacramento, for seven hours. The people meeting them waited. They friends and family waited. And all along the tracks going north, people in stations waited. And that waiting caused their friends and family to wait. People met each other during that wait, and fell in love. People fought during that wait, and fell out of love. A ripple spread through hundreds, or thousands of people, as we were all directly affected by this one tragic decision of this one deeply conflicted man. And because of that ripple, all our lives were changed.
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