So my blog post for this week is late, as I came down with a cold. I’ve self-diagnosed it could have been an extreme reaction to end of the year cleaning. Note to self: hoover under the bed more often.
So like most people I try to be as organised as possible in order to get everything done in a timely order. The news is that I am not super human. Further to this that although it may be great to use social media to predetermine pre-scheduled output it might not be very connected to the reality of our lives. That you may think that the author of a blog has got everything under control and is cruising through a life of eternal bliss. When they are in fact having the most humbling of human experiences: sickness.
Like any disturbance in the force it’s a great opportunity for learning. For years I used to go to work sick like a badge of honour. I even used to brag that I had never phoned in sick for work; after all wasn’t it something to be proud. Somewhere along those lines and much much later all that gusto was shattered in to a million pieces, and well even now I was never quite the same again. When daily illness became the norm for me. Sickness like cold and flu where like a long awaited reprieve and I used to relish the opportunity to take to my bed totally guilt free. Yes I had to be physically sick to lie in bed guilt free.
Now I know taking care of myself, when I’m sick is the first step in the rung for self-respect. That my self-worth is not predicted by my working productivity. When I’m sick I see it as a call to radical self-care. If we care about ourselves at all, we know that there are certain things that we need to do to get better. We take ourselves to bed. We rest our bodies. We make sure we drink lots of water. We stock up on the healthy food we need to boost our immune system. We comfort ourselves. We make brave attempts to find treatments, that will alleviate our symptoms and bring some relief. Most of all we’ll do anything to find a cure. If we want to get better at all we are forced to take the necessary steps to nurse ourselves back to health.
Much like life itself often the immediate solutions are not readily available and we simply have to give into the discomfort of being alive and hope that “this too shall pass”. In the meantime the best that we can do is love ourselves in the process.
