Laughter is an essential part of healing, no matter what you’re dealing with. Here are two hilarious articles from The Onion that I’ve tied to relevant topics:
The first funny article reminds us how difficult it is for most people to give up on the idea of “achieving” -- an idea which, ironically, can be one of the greatest hinderances to healing. If you don’t allow cut yourself some slack and be okay with doing nothing, it’s hard to relax and give your body the time it needs to recover, especially when you’re talking about a long-lasting condition. Stop being so hard on yourself!
This second Onion article provides a tongue-in-cheek reminder of how we could all benefit from surrendering our illusion of control -- though not, of course, to “smart people,” as in the article, but rather to just the natural course of fate, or the universe, or God, or whatever word you want to use to describe it.
Love Poems (Part 1)
In my last post, I discussed guilty pleasures and their relationship to self-acceptance. Well, here’s another guilty pleasure of mine: writing poetry, and in this case, love poems. But I am not ashamed of this. It is an expression of myself, an expression of truth. How could I be ashamed of Truth?
Almost every problem in the world can be attributed, if you trace it back far enough, to a lack of love and connection. I think the same can be said for illness: when we don’t get the love we need, our bodies are less likely to remain healthy.
Instead of going into reasons why this happens, which would take a considerable amount of time and consideration, I’ve decided to share a number of love poems. Allow yourself to read them slowly, take them in, and sit with them for a while if you want. Allow yourself to feel loved and accepted. Enjoy.
I Will Teach You How to Sing
Lover, when I find you, I will give you the ocean
and show you who made it.
I will teach you how to sing
from your soul rather than from your brain.
You will never know loneliness.
I will ensure that you never learn that word.
We will revel in the joy that we are.
If I knew how to braid hair, I would braid
yours into pictures. Each would carry the
same message: I adore you.
I love you with every breath in my body.
And when my lungs finally gasp out, I will love you
as the sprouting trees. I’ll become the birds that eat
their fruits, and in that feathered form, I’ll be
your soul singer each morning when you awake.
But why wait? I am with you even now, and already
all this has begun.
-
Staring into the Sun
looking into your face is
like staring into the sun,
but I will happily blind myself
to see this light of life
-
For more on the subject of love and self-acceptance, refer to some of the other blog posts, especially my last one, entitled “Guilty Pleasures.” Click here to read "Love Poems (Part 2)."
All poems on this blog are copyrighted material.
In a column this week for Slate magazine, Mike Spies discusses “guilty pleasures” -- what they say about us, how we deal with them in social settings, and even the interests that he hesitates to share.
I appreciate the frankness and honesty he exhibits, especially when he shares his “lame defenses” for watching The Bachelor, The Bachelorette, and other shows with “no anthropological significance.”
The article hits a rich vein of truth: that in our society, we’re far too obsessed with what people think of us, which leads us to develop an intellectually and culturally acceptable set of interests in addition to the real one made up of stuff we actually enjoy. Sure, there’s always overlap, but the first list wouldn’t exist if we weren’t trying to impress people.
The most essential point Spies makes in his article seems to be almost a passing thought. Musing on the implied questions of why you’re too embarrassed to admit what you like, he writes, “‘Are you so insecure [in yourself that] you can’t engage anything that isn’t obviously ‘smart’?’”
Well, apparently most people can’t. They’re too afraid of being rejected by the people around them. And that’s a real shame, because when you stop being yourself, it not only makes you unhappy, it makes it harder for everyone else to be happy, too.
The funny thing is, I used to do it, too -- that is, I’d express my interests in such a way as to seem cooler or more intellectual than I “actually am” (quotation marks because this is all completely subjective!), sometimes stopping just short of outright lying. Sure, I have my intellectually acceptable interests, like chess, politics, and philosophy. But I admit to some guilty pleasures, too. Number one on that list is the music of Jimmy Eat World, complete with all their melancholic, sometimes borderline-emo lyrics and sad vocals. Hell, they’re one of my favorite bands, and I own every song they’ve ever put out, even the stuff I had to dig for on eBay.
But Jimmy Eat World is not a guilty pleasure, per se, because I don’t feel guilty about listening, just as I don’t feel guilty about giving five stars out of five to the movie Eat Pray Love (yes, that movie). Frankly, I don’t care anymore if you tell me I’m a loser. Because you know what? I’m secure enough in myself, happy enough with myself, that other people’s opinions no longer matter.
Not everyone is going to like you. That’s said so often that it feels cliché and stupid to even say it (uh-oh, am I going to lose my intellectual credibility for saying something trite and unoriginal?), but it’s the truth. And as long as you seek other people’s approval, you will be miserable.
Most of the people around you are just as insecure as you are, if not more so. They’re just as scared and, whether they’re real enough to admit it or not, just as much in need of love. So love yourself, accept yourself, and then extend the same gift to them, even if they laugh at your taste in reality TV shows.
Geez, You’re Mental (Spaces on the Page and Spaces in Thought)
In his column this week, Slate magazine writer Farhad Manjoo lays into people who commit what he considers a terrible offense: using two spaces after a period. I guess I’m a terrible person, then, because if it weren’t for the automatic space-erasers on these sites, there would never be less than two spaces at the end of my written sentences.
(View the column by clicking here.)
Manjoo provides ample arguments to back him up: typographers have agreed since the early 1900s that one space is correct and two spaces is “criminal”; people who use two spaces only do so because of the way typewriters worked 60 years ago; having one space instead of two is “more visually pleasing.”
Although at first I expected a perfectionistic rant (I’m a recovering grammar geek, and even I thought writing an entire article about spaces was going a bit overboard), it turned out to be a solid piece with some interesting historical bits for me to learn.
The best lesson we can learn from this article, however, has nothing to do with grammatical or typographical spaces, but rather about the space between our thoughts, or the lack thereof. About how ridiculously mental -- that is to say, how concept-obsessed, how mind-based -- we’ve all become.
Where once we lived in nature, worked in the fields, tended gardens, crafted things with our hands, now we make our livings talking and pontificating, consigning the real labors to the machines.
I’m not saying we shouldn’t have intellectual discussions, and I don’t feel there’s anything wrong with working with ideas versus concrete objects (the separation is just in our minds, anyway). But we’re focusing on a single word while forgetting to read the poem!
The result, unfortunately, is that we’re completely caught up in our thinking minds instead of living in the real world. We no longer know how to just be present to what we’re doing; there’s always a line of commentary, most often coming from within our own heads.
So even as we’re exposed to more incredible opportunities than could fit into ten lifetimes, we’re seeing record rates of depression, social isolation, anxiety, and suicides. Even conditions alleged to be entirely physical (I don’t believe anything is ever so separate) can be linked to the manic brain.
The secret is not to do more, or think differently, or be somebody else. The secret is to let the mind be still and to be present to what we’re doing, whether that’s working in a garden or punching a keyboard, trying to decide how many spaces to use. The impact is profound.
The sun rode low in the sky, about an hour from sunset on an unseasonably warm end-of-September day. I enjoyed it with a walk, making my way out past the farm buildings and the calf hutches, down the dirt path leading through the grove and out into the back pasture and cornfields. Every tree, every leaf, every detail was noticed and appreciated, as though hyper-aware while completely calm and centered.
Had I been walking with my awareness on my thoughts, I would have missed the three deer, a mother and her two nearly-grown fawns, standing not 100 feet from where I had stopped short. The moment I spotted them, I expected them to dart away, but they stayed. I stood motionless, even being careful not to breath too heavily for fear that they might bolt. But instead they come closer, step by step, slowly but steadily, occasionally stopping to munch on the clover and grass beneath their hooves. When they had come to within about 50 feet of me, they slowed and stopped, watching me carefully. I stared back, transfixed, unwilling to move because I knew that it would cost me this scene.
This was the essence of living in the moment. (Funny, isn’t it, that I’m talking about living in the moment by using the past tense?) All else had left my mind, so enamored was I of these three deer. Awareness of pain or discomfort in my body had gone. The calculations and concepts about healing or not healing had gone. My identity, even, had fled. The stillness was intense and healing and beautiful. I was almost breathless.
I stood there for a long time, the deer inching closer between bites. The one I took to be the mother began to step with a certain fascinating, feminine confidence: lifting high then very deliberately and firmly dropping each hoof, as if to say, ‘What you’re seeing here is mine, and that you’re seeing it is a gift, not something to be taken lightly.” Or maybe, “I’m in control here. These little ones are mine, and I will protect them.”
At one point a car passed on the road, and the mother deer made a warning noise in her throat. The white tails of all three deer rose like flags as they sprinted away down the pasture. But instead of fleeing into the fields, they stopped, and even started back toward me. I cautiously began to sit down, but the slight movement prompted them to make their exit. They disappeared into the fields, and I was left sitting in the descending dusk feeling as though an angel had just passed. I took several minutes to stand up and go back inside.
Healing comes out of that sort of stillness, that space where the mind is too much in awe to think or produce commentary. We’ve forgotten what that’s like, and it’s been to our own detriment. Being in that space of stillness and beauty -- which is to be found
anywhere, not just in the kind of magic I witnessed tonight -- is healing, cleansing, purifying. Nothing else can exist there, much less make trouble for you. But to never be in that place means that we’re trapped always in the frenetic wheel of action our minds have perpetuated, never finding any real peace until we’re drugged into sleep.
So make time for stillness. You don’t have to be ill to benefit from it. This kind of meditation on stillness doesn’t take a certain amount of time -- there’s no 30-minute minimum requirement. Time has no hold in this place, so even a minute can feel have a profound impact, and 10 minutes can feel like an infinity.
Go outside and just be: feel the trees and wind, smell the air, hear the bugs and birds (or whatever sounds exist in the season), see every color and every detail. And if you don’t have time to go outside, just take a moment to focus on the in and out of your breath. In through the nose, deeply and slowly, then gently out through the mouth. Thank your body for giving you breath and life.
You will be amazed what you may find.
I was talking last week with a high school senior who was about to enter her last season of competitive speech. As an alumnus of that same speech program, I was curious to know how the head coach was doing.
“He’s, like, never frickin’ there,” she informed me, explaining that he missed a lot of practices with students because of his health. “He should just quit. It’s pretty selfish of him to keep coaching when he can hardly do anything.”
“Maybe, but I don’t think he sees it that way,” I replied. “I bet he can’t imagine life without teaching and coaching, since he doesn’t have any family. He needs it.”
“Yeah, but the real perspective is, it’s selfish.”
Ah, the “real” perspective -- that magical, elusive, objective truth by which everything is judged.
News flash: it doesn’t exist! Whether we’re talking about people, current events, or the condition of someone’s health, there is no one “real” perspective, no one truth that we need to figure out. The truth depends on your point of view. You determine the identity of a thing by naming it, labeling it, and assigning attributes to it -- or in some cases, by accepting someone else’s ideas for those things. So why not go with something that serves you?
For example, instead of believing that the condition of your health is stuck as it is, and that it’s a bad thing, why not believe that it’s a sign that your being is experiencing incredible shifts and changes, that you’re about to crawl out of your cocoon? Just because someone else has told you something is true, or because you think it’s true, doesn’t mean that it is. Choose your own terms. You may not be able to control what is happening to you, but you have the power to define it.
There’s a widely held belief in this country that it’s difficult to eat healthy if you’re busy. This is not only untrue, it’s damaging to our health, because we have accepted poorer and poorer quality food in our diets.
But where did this notion come from? From the moneymen in the food industry, of course. Their advertisements have hammered into our heads the same idea, over and over: you’re busy, you don’t have time to cook, you don’t have time to prepare healthy food without our help. Watch TV around mealtime and you’re bound to see several commercials trying to sell you a “quick and easy” family dinner that claims to be healthy “while saving you time,” or a gas station pizza, or fast food.
Bullshit. I don’t buy it -- neither the concept nor the products they’re selling.
One of my two younger brothers, a senior in high school, has a rigorous schedule. He takes three college classes while keeping a part-time job, participating in band and cross country, and making time for his girlfriend. My mom works as a teacher and, for about 10 months out of the year, puts in 16- 18-hour days when you factor in her duties at church, with the 4-H club my brothers are members of, and at home.
You could say these two are perfect candidates for the quick, crappy meals, fast food, and the like. And yes, unfortunately, they do eat them sometimes, despite my gentle nudges to get them away from that kind of crap. They say it’s because they just don’t have time to get anything else ready.
But consider this. Today my brother and I ate lunch at the same time. While he ate chips, a processed chicken patty on a “honey wheat” bun (translation: full of preservatives and tree pulp, no joke), a glass of over-processed milk, and a few carrots, I opted for a plum, some raw almonds and spinach leaves, and a piece of raw pepper. Guess whose meal was quicker? His took about 4-5 minutes to be ready to eat; mine took less than 2. Perhaps just as curious is that my much healthier meal was far more portable than his -- all I would have needed to take it in the car with me was a single plastic bag and a paper towel.
Granted, there are times when eating healthy does take more time. For example, chopping up a bunch of vegetables for a rice-and-bean stir fry would take longer than microwaving a hot pocket. But remember, just because it’s healthy doesn’t mean it requires too much of your time. And even when it does, don’t you think that you’re valuable enough to treat with self-respect? I think so.
For more information on eating healthy and unraveling the truth about the food you're eating, check out “NakedFood” on Facebook, or friend its founder, the lovely Jaqui Karr. (I will be mentioning Jaqui again in future posts.)
Each one of us has certain ingrained patterns in our being. Sometimes they’re as major as a crippling fear or a chronic illness, and sometimes it’s less significant, like an emotional trigger that makes us get angry at a certain action, or a tendency to be tense and uptight.
These patterns exist because all us have lived unconsciously. They come from the time when we were still controlled by the thoughts in our heads and the circumstances around us. Those of us have awoken to the truth of it, who’ve realized that this entire life is just a grand play, have stopped creating these patterns by the simple fact of their awareness. Others are still building them in their unconsciousness.
I used to live a profoundly dark and unconscious life; I was perpetually miserable. One of the patterns carried over from that time is my fear of rejection, especially with women. It is such a deeply ingrained fear that even now, the right circumstances can cause my muscles to get tighter, my heart to race, and my adrenal glands to exhaust themselves, even as the psychological symptoms are more and more diminished.
Awareness is the key to unraveling every pattern, because every pattern is a product of unconsciousness, of a lack of awareness. Awareness of a pattern means realizing that it’s not real, that it’s just part of a fantasy your mind has concocted (and which, in many cases, your body may have bought into).
The next step is to take inspired action to undo it.
For my crippling fear of rejection, the solution seemed obvious: at the next available opportunity, I had to face my fear and approach a woman to ask her out, without allowing myself to get caught up in the frenetic chatter of my mind as it screamed its warnings. By remaining centered and self-aware, I have allowed my mind and body to gradually establish new connections, new points of reference to replace the old ones that have caused so much drama and anxiety.
There is no difference between what I have described and a chronic illness. Becoming aware and allowing yourself to experience the condition differently, with new points of reference, can shift a seemingly physical pattern just as easily as an emotional one. Holistic medicine teaches us that there is really no separation between the two -- they are directly connected. The only separation, in truth, happens in the way we think and talk about them.
The anxiety pattern I have surrounding women hasn’t completely dissolved yet. Talking to one woman and getting rejected was not enough to break a long cycle of fear. But it is, without question, on its way out. My physical condition, too, has dramatically improved as I’ve become more and more self-aware and got rid of all my ideas about what was happening in my body and what was or wasn’t possible. Where once I was in constant pain and seemingly always in a state of depression or on the verge of a panic attack, I’m now exercising, doing volunteer work, spending time with friends, and almost always feeling at peace.
So remember that no matter what may be happening in your body and mind, no matter how severe or crippling it may seem, it can be overcome. All it takes is your awareness and your willingness to heal. Sometimes no action need follow, because awareness will take care of it -- darkness cannot survive when exposed to the light -- and even when action does result, it’s natural. You may still need outside therapies of some sort, but being aware will allow them to finally work.
IMAGES OF MAYO CLINIC
[1 - introduction]
the place strives for a calming vibe
sculptures paintings aesthetics considered
volunteer musicians on a sleek new piano
but I’m not calm
I see the swans trapped in the rafters
in the paintings in the elevators and waiting
rooms and I want to burst back into what
I was
[2 - the nalgene jug]
it smells of ammonia and piss
(the latter of which I add carefully
each time, to avoid getting
any on my hands)
I carry it in a massive and (fittingly)
puke-colored plastic bag with a long
drawstring—essential to providing a
more comfortable separation between
me and It
growing heavier and more
foul-smelling with each addition
I make, each of the 24 hours,
it accompanies me everywhere I go—
except when I’m sleep, and then
it squats in the bathroom of our
hotel room, like a fat troll under a bridge,
waiting and sneering and stinking
[3 - blood tests]
there are thirty-one tests
on order, twelve vials to fill
and I’m deathly afraid of needles
I’m sitting in the sterile white
of a curtain-cubicle trying
to control my heart rate
the band tied around my arm
traps the blood
“it’s not so bad” she says
as she’s about to strike
pulsing faster
and faster
and faster
I look to you with an animal fear
consuming my eyes
(edit—the space of agony and cursing
thoughts as the needle breaks the skin—
[enter PA NIC]
! )
sounds and lights muffling, muffled
I can’t hold up my head
and I decide these must be the moments
just before a loss of consciousness
but it’s done now and I’m still awake
I wait a moment before standing
and even then agree to a wheelchair
the needle’s gone, leaving only a
bandage and a tiny prick mark
but my pallor—scars—admit to
a deeper, older wound
[4 - recommendation]
“I recommend you do this”
“NO.”
(my muscles ache with terrible intensity
but there’s the disagreeing in
my face that I’ve nurtured and perfected
over years and years of this and I
verbalize these thoughts in simple terms)
“I disagree
and
I’m not doing it.”
(what I don’t add is that
I don’t trust you
you will not trap me
in your man-oven, witch doctor)
“okay”
(and now she’s gone and I can breathe easier
because I’ve somehow won)
[5 - sleep study]
the irony of a sleep study
is that there’s precious little
sleeping involved:
the electrodes and wires and monitors
and cameras and the strange feeling of
being somewhere I don’t belong—and,
to my exhausted fury and contrary to
the doctors orders, the technician
waking me at 6:00
[6 - results]
found nothing
all’s normal—all’s well, etc.—
this corresponds with the history
of the place, conveniently
chipper smiles
and unsolicited suggestions
without any experiential basis
and “I think”s and “you need to”s
and “I would suggest”s
organized like an
efficient number system
—calling me in,
(breath) and now out—
cattle through a chute
okay?
okay
(pleasantries all around)
okay.
there was no harm in trying,
That. Them.
and yet—an indestructible
YET
more vital than my heart—
I haven’t in years gone
a day without pain,
without the piercing fear
that my bones are deteriorating
and now lightning bolts have entered
the paintings, stirring up the water
and frying all the swans
The Fallacy of Facts
Today my youngest brother, an 8th grader, complained to me that his grades would be a lot better if he were better at taking tests.
“You don’t have to be bad at taking tests,” I said.
“But I am. It’s a fact,” he replied.
“Well, facts change.”
Too often with chronic illness we get into a chronic belief cycle -- believing that the present situation is the way things are always going to be. Not only is this belief damaging, it’s completely wrong. The one constant in the universe is that nothing remains constant. All of creation is dynamic. Everything is engaged in a perpetual cycle of change, mostly on levels we’re unaware of, that our conscious minds can’t begin to comprehend. This throws the entire notion of a "chronic" condition into question.
One year ago, the “facts” were that I was underweight (118 pounds at my lowest), in a great deal of pain most of the time, possessed by major anxiety and depression, unable to exercise, and unsure when healing would come -- or if it was going to come at all.
Today, the “facts” are significantly different: I exercise several times each week, I have less pain, I am happy and at peace much of the time, and I have just topped 140 pounds (mostly added muscle from the exercising I never thought I’d ever be able to do).
The main reason for the changes? I shifted my perception and stopped believing that my condition was static, or stuck. Since facts are not objective, but rather relative to our beliefs and mindset, this wasn’t something I caused to happen; it was a natural result of the shifts within myself.
The fact is, facts change. With a little nudge, the facts of your reality can change, too.
During the last few days I’ve been a little bit under the weather. I have my first cold in three years, and with all the associated symptoms added to what I feel normally, I certainly don’t feel great. If I didn’t know any better, I would say that I’ve taken a step backwards in my recovery.
Yet there is significant reason to believe that the situation continues to improve. Here are just a few reasons:
1) This “cold” period follows a stretch of 8-9 days during which I had more energy than I knew what to do with.
2) Despite more fatigue and muscle pain (and today, a headache, sore throat, stuffy nose, and chest pain), I have continued to work out three times a week at minimum.
3) Thanks in large part to working out, I’ve gained 10 pounds in the last couple months to finally reach a “normal” weight of about 141.
4) Also partly thanks to working out, my spine is going out of place less easily, which means that my reliance on chiropractic care is slowly, slowly diminishing.
5) I’ve begun volunteering at the local elementary school with a Mexican kid who doesn’t speak any English -- a perfect opportunity for me since I speak Spanish, have an ESL certification, and have been in dire need of something substantial to keep me busy.
6) Feeling crappy, whether physically or psychologically, means that there exists an even greater potential for growth. When I had a major seizure in April this year, for example, I was told that it was serious, and the overarching theme was “this is bad.” I chose to eschew that outlook and instead decided it was a catalyst for change. And it was. It was around that time that I began to see steady improvement in the state of my health. (This is a major subject, so I’ll discuss it more in a future post.) I see no reason why this period can’t be in some way the same kind of indicator.
This is all to say one thing: a situation and its future potential are defined entirely by the story you give to it. It seems that the silver lining of feeling crappy is that you can create your own silver lining. That's what you do if you want to heal.
