I used to write from the hospital quite regularly, as I would be here every two months for an infusion treatment for a stomach disorder. However, for the last few years I have been able to administer the treatment at home through a pen every two weeks. Now though, they have changed my medication, so here I am again for the next three IV infusions.
Stay healthy.
Ill health sucks, but I have been ill for so long bed for so much if not life, that I don't actually know what it is to feel healthy. I don't remember what pain-free feels like. The discomfort is constant, day, night, awake or asleep.
And I think this is part of the reason I am pretty critical of society pushing for people to be pretty useless unless the conditions are good. For a decade now people have talked about building "resilience" yet I think it is all just talk. Most people don't seem capable of doing even the simplest of things of they feel or even predict it will cause discomfort.
You?
It is difficult to self-evaluate our own level of resiliency perhaps, because we are part of our system, and we only have ourselves and observations to reflect upon. But I wonder if I asked a range of people who have observed me in different conditions, would they observe the behaviours of a resilient person? And no, I don't think I have had of currently have the hardest life in the world, but I do think that it is harder than the average. But maybe that is what we all think of our lives, as it gives us justifications as to why we haven't accomplished more, of reached out potential.
Are my discomforts just excuses?
Perhaps it is a chicken or egg scenario, where I am making myself uncomfortable by making the excuses. Like a self-fulfilling prophecy that holds me back. An inner voice that says "I can't" and my body makes sure it is true, so as not to make a liar of itself.
I believe we all like to consider ourselves as strong people given our circumstances, but is that objectively the case for me. I am not so sure. Instead, I tell myself a story that in the conditions I have done okay, I have survived, endured and at times, even done pretty well. Yet, I also know that I could have done better, had I at times chosen to tell a different story to myself. Instead of pain being a reason to not do, it could have been a reason to do. The inspiration for growth and healing, rather than the excuse for stagnancy.
Pain tolerance.
It is incomparable. The same scalpel can inflict the same cut on two people, and the experience of the event will be indescribably different at the physical level, even if all aspects are identical. Because the mental and emotional state of each person is different and this will alter the experience heavily. Extreme pain for one, might be mild discomfort for the other.
But most of the pain that holds us back these days seems to be non-physical. It is emotional pain, or psychic pain, that puts imaginary limitations on our physical selves.
I don't feel like going to the gym.
Is that a physical feeling, oran emotional one? Can you tell the difference? If it is a physical ailment that is stopping the going, wouldn't it require thinking to evaluate the condition? Therefore it would be "I think I can't go to the gym".
I feel I don't want to go to the gym.
I can do it, but I don't want to.
There is a difference, isn't there? One is an incapability, and the other is a feeling of incapability. There is a guy army gym who works out hard, even though his body, including his face, has been badly disfigured before. He is missing both legs, fingers from both hands, and his entirely coveted with graft scars. But there he is, working out harder than most and much, much harder than those with the excuses as to why they can't.
Pain is just a feeling.
Seems so obvious. And yet, most don't think about pain,they just feel it and let it hold them back. They don't differentiate between physical and emotional pain,or work out which they are experiencing and why. Pain is a warning system for our body to pay attention. It is a risk mitigation process. Yet even though we have developed newer complex systems that give us the ability to imagine the future, our pain system hasn't developed to suit, so our emotional pain uses te sä pathways as physical pain. We protect an imaginary ego with the same veracity as we will protect our heart or brain from injury. Our emotional reactions will trigger as fast as we blink when a fly touches our eyelashes. Our emotional responses are lightning fast, because the body is built to react, not think.
This means that while physical resiliency is about speeding up the healing process to remain healthy. Emotional resiliency is about slowing down the reaction process to think about whether the emotions we are having are valid, and whether the actions we take based on them are appropriate.
We might feel justified, but are we?
I don't know if this kind of conversation rattles around in your head at all, or if anyone is interested in this level of self-exploration, but it does and is for me. As I see it, so many of our personal and societal ills are because we are poor at understanding our own relationships with the world, whether it be with other people, conditions, or concepts. We feel, without understanding why we have been triggered in the first place, yet still believe we are right to feel the way we do.
What more can we do in ignorance?
Taraz
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