In Borrowed Shoes

Everything We Need   I don’t know how it happened, but it did.   It might be the dust that got in my eyes. It might be I somehow poked my own eyeball. As I wake this morning, I can barely open my left eye. When I blink, it feels like a knife slicing across my eyeball.   My tent mate is the doctor for our trip. She is also a thirty-something woman, here on her own spiritual quest, asking her own deep questions. She looks at my eye with a flashlight as I open it as widely as possible.   “It looks like you scratched your cornea,” she tells me. “How is that possible?” I ask. “Well, that, I can’t tell you. But you’ll need to use drops and keep the eye shut as much as you can,” she informs me. “Let’s put a patch over your eye so you can keep it closed. We don’t have any drops though. Keeping it closed is the best we can do right now.”   We are three and a half weeks into the trek and we are circumambulating Mt. Kailash. We’ve wound our way through the Nepalese mountains, slowly climatized to the thin air that makes it hard to breathe. Our legs and feet have adjusted to walking six to eight hours a day up and down the craggy, narrow paths that we share with goats and goat herders. On occasion we pass yaks.   At 15,000 feet in elevation there is little water. Each morning we are lucky to each receive a small bowl to wash ourselves. Each morning we must decide which body part needs washing the most—our face? Our hands and feet? Our crotch?   It’s so cold that taking off any clothes isn’t even something the mind thinks about. I’ve been sleeping in the same long underwear and fleece sweater, hat, and mittens every night for days. I don’t know what day it is, nor the date.   I can’t imagine how my cornea got scratched. I agree to the patch because every time I blink, it is excruciating. I wonder how long it will take to heal. I wonder how I will manage trekking with a patch. All I want to do is close my eyes and take a nap.   My doctor-tent-mate creates a patch to cover my left eye. It helps me keep the eye shut. For a nano-second, I wonder how it looks, but any vanity that came with me on this trip has evaporated. In this harsh, desert landscape, priorities are clear: first, stay alive. Second, do everything you can to stay dry and warm. Third, eat to fuel your body for the daily trek and sleep well at night for the next day’s odyssey.   I make it through the day’s adventures. As I come to dinner, a few people in our group bring great news.   “We were out looking around and we ran into a group of Belgian doctors who are here on an expedition. We told them about your scratched cornea, and they gave us medicated eye drops for you.”   I want to cry, but I know that wouldn’t be good. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. I am speechless. Out here, in the middle of nowhere, where there are no pharmacies or health-care centers, no stores, nothing really, out of thin air, medicated eye drops appear.   It feels like angels are watching over me. I am given the tangible lesson that we have everything we need when we need it.   “Thank you. Oh, my God. Thank you so much,” I tell them. A wave of relief washes over me.   I take the drops and am filled with hope. Hope that my eye will heal faster. Hope that we really do have what we need when we need it. Hope in humanity and generosity.   Hope. My heart is full. I am filled with gratitude.