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July 2006 - Article 1
Sometimes it's nice to do nothing but lay around in bed all day. This is one of the advantages of being ill, if you're willing to see any advantage. Society finally gives you permission to pull back and not incessantly give. When one is well, there is constant pressure to say yes to the flurry of requests and demands that come through, whether it is friends and family looking for favors, your boss saying that this additional responsibility he is heaping on you is essential for the life of the company, or the newest gadget advertised promises renewed self-esteem, distinction, or fulfillment comes along.
When you're too sick to pucker up to go to work, the chaos finally stops. For awhile, at least. Even those who have children that can't understand why mommy isn't running around constantly send them to school. Maybe then it stops for a second. So what happens in this state of molasses, when you are so sick the world is pea soup? Time doesn't move. It is like being transported from some high-tech city to some jungle wilderness where everything is drugged from the sun. Or desert, if you are so dry that no amount of liquid seems to quench you. Perhaps sickness is a way of telling you that there is more to life than the decoration of artifice and constant rushing that has been created because of external roles. If your identity is tied up in a role that occupies most of your thinking, sickness gives, perhaps only briefly, an insight that there is more than the jobs designed to keep you busy and out of trouble. What lies on the other side of this pause? Being sidelined with nothing but your own thoughts can be scary. Although the free time at first seems luxurious, suddenly being left to a world of thoughts that have been long neglected due to an external life becomes terrifying. Maybe you wish to go back to work, or the carpool, if only to keep yourself "busy", if only to shut the disturbance encountered inside. But illness isn't a vacation that can be cut short. Your body is on strike. The union won't settle unless you make a new contract of living with it. Who knows what happens when you look within. This may be a signal that the job is too stressful, and it is time to take that leap of faith and apply to the graduate school program you've always wanted to go to. Maybe your dogged commitment to a career has trimmed your social life to nothing, and it is time to bring more supportive people into your life. Or, it has blurred the dream of what you really wanted to do with your life. Maybe the inertia that goes with modern life is making you ill, and it's time to pick up those pastels you discarded in college because you were too busy with more "practical things", like statistics. What if you let your mind wander during this time? What if you let it wonder what life's meaning is for you? Maybe note dreams that you have at this time, both awake and sleeping, if you have the inclination to do so. Your soul might be trying to tell you something. The answers are always there if one wants to listen. When you are sick, you are only forced more closely to listen. But the answers are always there. |