I remembered tonight that I had a clear interest in things like Zen, meditation, and yoga when I was 12 years old. Back then there was a baseball pitcher that I liked who was open about his interest in these things. One day he was pitching and my dad said, “Bah! He’s a flake.” I didn’t argue with my dad, but I thought to myself, “No, he’s not a flake, he’s just interested in things our family doesn’t know anything about. If we were born on the other side of the world, these things would be considered normal.”
I thought about that last part during one of my hospital stays last year. One of my nurses had been raised as a Buddhist, and we talked quite a bit. It made me wonder how different my life might have been if I had known one single person who had an interest in these things when I was young. Back then, and in our neck of the woods, meditation and yoga were not “normal” things to think about.