Anne: she of life lessons.

I went to see my colleague Anne in hospital yesterday. I had not heard of her admission before the previous day when she mentioned it, after I joked about her WhatsApp status update. I had assumed she had happily written it as she worked from home, like everybody else. After a brief chat, she intimated that she had actually been admitted for two weeks and was scheduled to leave hospital in two days. I knew I had to see her.

Anne has more life than years in her. She exudes unmistakable confidence and picks lessons from everything and from anyone- and she is quite generous with sharing these lessons. Needless to say, when I went to see her, I undoubtedly carried more than I left with her.

Anne reminded me of many things. To begin with, Hannah Hunnard’s novel Hinds Feet on High Places, in which Hannah describes the spiritual journey of the protagonist, aptly named Much Afraid, in the company of two characters; Sorrow and Suffering. Her journey is full of fear, antagonism, doubt, shame and humiliation, but she keeps going because somehow there is “a meaning found to all sorrow and an answer too fair and wonderful to be as yet understood.”

Secondly, Anne brought to mind my experience as a seasoned 12-year-old actress in primary school. I understood scenes and transitions, and played different roles; sometimes as the lead actress and sometimes I came in on support roles. Once in while, for reasons I really didn’t bother about, with the right wardrobe and props, I played multiple characters. We also practiced endlessly and edited the script and our acts to make the scenes flow better and to ensure the right character came in at the right time and gave the desired effect.

Anne sat up on her hospital bed and listened to me explain, rather remorsefully, that I had no idea she was in hospital- otherwise I’d have come in earlier. With no hesitation, she said,

“You were not meant to know. It was not for you and it was not the right time….If people come in at the wrong time, they could spoil it or they may not play the roles they are meant to play at that time.”

There is a lovely gif where the toon’s eyes grow wider as he stares in one fixated direction, perhaps as a potent argument is thrown his way. It was the most appropriate one for me then.

If we look at life as one big set, the reality of that lesson is unquestionable- the Biblical wisdom of the discernment of times and seasons holds; a time to sow and a time to harvest, and we could extrapolate that to what Anne mentioned. When sowing, certain people come in at that time for it to be a successful venture, and during harvest, we need another skill set -perhaps not present during sowing. If we get actors mixed up in the scenes, they may interrupt the flow and there is no knowing which way it would go.

There could be chaos. But the encouragement in psychologist Carl Jung’s philosophy is to look for the “secret order” even in chaos. We then learn to let go off people whom we could have judged for ‘not being there for us’ and we learn to welcome new friendships because in the set of our lives, there are different scenes where we come in to play roles for others as they play on with theirs.

During her journey, Much Afraid, in Hunnard’s allegory, desires to have wholeness and stability of feet as she observes hinds or deer that climb on very steep rocks and yet do not slip or fall off. The Good Shepherd, who is with Much Afraid later in her journey, commends her desire but rather than flatten the mountains, he urges "the only way to develop hinds' feet is to go by the paths which the hinds use.’’

Anne’s path has been rough, but she taught me that she developed feet that have enabled her to walk along it, and so can I.