The Faith Healer and the Garbage Collector

I stood at the top of the 450 steps that wound down through the rain forest to the ocean. I’d been instructed to run down and then back up the stairs, twice, even if my knees felt worse.

Given the pain my knees were already in—that seemed like a really bad idea.

Two friends of mine get treated by the same physiotherapist. They’ve been speaking in reverent tones about him for years, as if they had access to their own private witch doctor. Despite the healing miracles I’d overheard, I’d brushed off the repeated suggestions that I should try to see their man for my sore knees, because by default, I’m skeptical of things that sound too good to be true.

But in the last few months, my knee problem has been getting worse. Until finally I couldn’t get on my bike for the regular cycling that has stabilized my physical and mental health for years.

Feeling desperate, I finally texted one of the friends and asked if he might put in a word for me, just in case it worked to see Paolo. His last name or any traditional credentials had never been mentioned and it felt odd to be on a first-name basis with a Latin miracle worker I’d never met, but my distress pushed me over the edge.

A few days later I got a message that a morning spot had opened up for later in the week. I had no idea where miracles take place these days, it could have been a back alley for all I knew. But I was aware that world class athletes were queuing up on a monthly basis to see Paolo, so I put the appointment and address in my calendar.

As it turns out, Paolo works his magic in a nondescript professional building that has a front door, an actual elevator and the same fluorescent lighting found throughout the healthcare world. Knowing that healthcare workers never run on time, I arrived at 9:59 for my 10 am appointment.

As I checked in at the traditional reception desk a sturdy man in taupe colored hospital scrubs breezed behind the counter, dropped off a chart, picked up another, and walked out to shake my hand.

Shiny eyes.

That’s what he looked at me with.

It’s the one thing I’ve noticed that people who love their jobs have in common. It makes sense. The combination of their enthusiasm and hunger for a worthy challenge generates a visible luster of curiosity that isn’t ordinary. One look and you know that somebody is paying attention behind the penetrating gaze.

And all of that was certainly present in Paolo, who wasted no time getting us started. We were in the treatment room by 10:01.

I couldn’t tell you how long the appointment was. It might have been 20 minutes or it could have been 90. I know that he didn’t ask how I got on his list until half way through the session. Then he lit up at the mention of my friends’ names. “Good people,” he said, with meaningful regard. I got the sense he was surrendered to whatever forms of providence delivered humans into his care, and that he trusted the intelligent matrix of his reputation, friends, and clients to funnel the right stray dogs to his door. And so here I was.

What he did ask about the moment I entered the treatment room was the purpose of my visit.

“Well, my knees have been sore,” I explained.

He looked down at my legs for a second, then back up at my tired eyes.

“Ok,” he said. “So what’s going on in your life?”

Everything shifted on its axis. My mindset was tuned to someone who thought he had an appointment for an oil-change with a mechanic who was going to fix things while I read the paper and had a coffee. He had asked one simple question, and suddenly, part of me wanted to cry. The technician had somehow touched a sore spot before he laid a single finger on me or the problem. And I had the feeling he was already sensing what it was.

I briefly covered the last six months. Starting a new business, recurring panic attacks, a bike accident last November, trouble sleeping. He told me he knew that I had sleep apnea the moment I walked in, but at least I was hydrating well. I hadn’t mentioned the 60 ounces of water I drink every day without fail, but clearly didn’t need to.

“The knees are just where all this stuff is showing up,” he said. “Lay down.”

It doesn’t matter what the discipline is, mastery speaks for itself. The authority of his hands was the only thing that kept me relaxed and trusting while he manipulated my legs in painfully novel ways.

“You might hear a cracking sound or feel a pop,” he casually warned, like we were about to debone a chicken.

He kept talking as he yanked, realigned, and popped things back into place. I could have sworn his fingers were actually inside my joints, but I kept my eyes on the ceiling while trying not to squirm. I soon realized he was giving me homework, instructions for what to do before seeing him again.

“Hold on,” I said. “I’m working real hard to stay with the pain here, can you write this all down so I can read it later?”

He immediately shot back, countering my attempt to make myself more comfortable and let him do the work.

“I’m doing this on purpose,” he said. “I want you to remember what I’m telling you while I’m working on you. You’re smart. You’re entirely capable of this.”

He wasn’t having any of my overwhelmed-invalid-act. Suspending one of my legs, he said, “I’d trust these legs to lift a building. We’re going to get on top of this and you’re going to be cycling until you’re 100 years old.”

That’s when I sensed that his adjustment of my limbs was secondary to the re-alignment he was offering to my mind. What he was doing with his hands wasn’t as important as what he was doing with his words and intent. He actually was a faith healer. But it wasn’t his own faith he was focused on, it was the restoration of mine.

Laying there on the table I realized that over the last couple of years I’d slowly been surrendering over my stamina and agility to traditional aging narratives. Like it was all going to be downhill from here. But I could feel vitality stirring again in my marrow as he championed a new story.

The homework he had just given me finally registered, and determined to see it through, I repeated it back to him for clarity. But I ended the recall of it with a question mark—because it seemed a little crazy.

I was expecting the usual, ice your knees with a bag of peas and rest up for a few weeks. Instead, I was to run the wreck beach stairs twice on day one, three times on day two, rest on day three, and then repeat the cycle.

Wreck beach was an infamous flight of timber-hewn steps carved into the side of a cliff about a half hour from my house. These hundreds of stairs have been used for training by professional sports teams, elite athletes, and now, would apparently become familiar to me as I embraced them with bad knees.

He was asking me to move toward my pain, when I’d be backing away from it, assuming that inactivity was the most direct route to healing. In actuality, it seemed I was only prolonging the problem.

Before I knew it he brightly finished up and disappeared from the room just as promptly as he’d arrived.

“Holy shit,” I mumbled.

I paid for my session and walked out to the car.

The first thing I noticed was that he’d somehow managed to eliminate walking pain from my left hip, which I hadn’t gotten around to mentioning, and my knees felt tingly, but not sore.

The next morning I began my treatment plan, leaving the house at 5:30 am to run the stairs and returning home for my scheduled work. I repeated this the next day, rested on the third, and started the routine again on the fourth as instructed.

On day four my knees were indeed feeling quite sore, and I stood at the top of the descending railroad ties that defined each step, wondering if I should take an additional day off.

I was suddenly startled out of my inner debate by an energized volley of indistinguishable words from behind. Up until that moment, it had just been me and the trilling songbirds, dive-bombing through the high reaching branches of the forest.

The first thing I saw as I turned around was unexpectedly familiar.

Shiny eyes.

This time beaming from the face of a hunched over man in tattered Nikes who was in the middle of an animated narrative that he’d started for the birds, but now seemed happy to be sharing with a fellow human, without any compulsion to catch me up on the plot. Grinning through randomly available teeth, he walked toward me with a huge, empty, clear plastic garbage bag.

He was close enough now for me to get a good whiff of the time that had elapsed since his last episode of bathing, and I wanted to retreat, but caught the old impulse of backing away from discomfort that I was there to address. I stayed put as he drew close, stammering and stumbling while he chewed at his lip as though he was trying to get a piece of food out of his teeth without interrupting his story. He finally spat out what I swear looked more like a decaying molar than dislodged food. An implant perhaps from long ago which he kicked into the dirt, unfazed, and then covered with dust and cedar chips using the worn toe of his runners.

Finally he explained his joy and mission, to take that clean garbage bag down to the beach and fill it with the trash left behind from yesterday’s tourists, which he’d carry back up the same 450 stairs—perhaps to get a few dollars from recycling the bottles and aluminum cans—and then dispose of the rest.

Nobody had hired him for the work, but his alignment to its purpose and dignity gave him the same bright eyes I’d seen a few days ago in Paolo. And with the same abrupt exit he disappeared before me down the steps in a practiced glide and left me unraveled there, the way I’d been left in the physio room, contemplating the spirit of the human I’d just encountered.

Knees be damned, I lunged down the steps after him into the forest to meet the day’s work. I watched his bag of trash get bigger with each of my completed circuits between the top and the water as he combed the sand for garbage. Eventually, I started my last ascent up the steps while he trailed behind. I could hear the faint metallic clomp of his bag of cans being hauled up the staircase behind me.

My legs felt strong and my lungs expanded to capacity with ocean air as my heart thumped wildly in my chest. It was uncomfortably reassuring as I leaned into the ascent. And then I noticed there wasn’t a trace of soreness in my knees.

I thought about the faith healer and the garbage collector. “Where do these people come from?” I wondered.

As I reached the final section of steps I noticed an empty beer bottle that had been tossed into the bushes. I reached off the path, pulled it out, carried it the last few stairs to the top, and threw it into the trash.

The whole world looked different to me.

Almost like I was seeing it with shiny eyes.