Split in Yogic Doubt

My 5 year-old son has pneumonia. Temperatures of 104.1 and 103.5 have scared the heck out of me these last few days.  I fear sleeping at night for worry I may miss a dosage of motrin or Tylenol, or both when we've not been able to get the fever under control with just the one. During these times all I want to do is be with him.  Hold him. Watch over him. But today I had to go to back to work, and it felt terrible.

It's not that my son was not well taken care of, he was.  My husband was home with him- which means my son was being watched like a hawk and fiercely loved by a total papa bear.  But the point is, I wasn't home.  I wasn't in the place, and with the person, where everything inside of me felt I should have been today.  An awful feeling that crystalized for me when my boss asked me how my son was doing, and my only response was to begin to tear up- and I'm no crier.

These work-home dilemmas are so challenging, and I know not unique at all to me.  Feeling split between two obligations or two desires, or both, is at times heartbreaking.  My colleague frequently makes light fun of me because I am always looking for the win-win in any given situation. But so much in life just does not allow for a win-win.  Many times it is a win-lose, and sometimes we must accept the inevitability of a lose-lose. I hate lose-lose situations.  I know "hate" is a strong word, but "hate" is the feeling that truly captures my reaction to a situation that I cannot produce a desirable outcome at least for somebody, even if not for me.

I recently read the introduction to a book called The Great Work of Your Life: a Guide for the Journey to Your True Calling by Stephen Cope, Resident Scholar at Kripalu Center for Yoga and Health in Western Massachusetts. I had read another book by Mr. Cope, Yoga and the Quest for the True Self which was one of those books where every other page I was copying down his words and reflecting in my journal about a thought he had proposed. So, I kinda knew I'd enjoy his other work too.  But, imagine my surprise when the first topic he brings up in the introduction alone captures the essence of my current struggle.

Mr. Cope begins to orient the reader to the story behind the Bhagavad Gita, a very important book in the yogic tradition.  After learning about the central personalities of Arjuna and Krishna, Mr. Cope introduces the reader to the theme of "doubt." He describes "doubt" as an area of suffering where we are stuck between two powerful pulls. The quintessential rock and a hard place.  Where win-win is impossible.

He says:

"Until I began to wrestle with the teachings of the Bhagavad Gita, I thought that doubt was the least of my problems.  Grasping and aversion, the classic afflictions pointed to by the earlier yoga tradition, were much more obvious in my life.  However as I have begun to investigate the Gita's view on doubt, and as I begin to understand what doubt really is, I see it at work everywhere.  I've begun to see the ways-both small and large-in which I am paralyzed from action on a daily basis. Split. Replete with misgivings. Unsure. A foot on both sides of various dilemmas."

When I read this, I felt my own experience was being mirrored back to me in the most obvious of ways.  How strange when that happens. How serendipitous.

Mr. Cope adds that doubt in the yogic lineage is defined as a "thought that touches both sides of a dilemma at the same time...the paralyzing affliction." He says "it follows, then, that doubt is the central affliction of all men and women of action."  Compile that with a personality that is still caught at times in black and white categories of "right" and "wrong," and a perfect storm for inner conflict in the form of outward suffering has been created.

So what does one do? How does "a woman of action," as I am, not succumb to paralysis when making decisions between bad and worse or good and great? Where if one person wins, another will lose?

I suppose I'd be lying if I said I had the  answer to this. But I think there is value to posing the questions.  Maybe asking questions is a way to keep the soil loose and workable as in a garden, even if you are still far off from planting the seeds. Of course, having said that, if anyone out there has any wise suggestions, I'd be very open to that too!