Healing hurts. It takes a certain will power to heal. The body, the mind, the spirit all get wounded.
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| A fashioned life-like tree from the tools that destroyed it. |
The wound has boundaries. The boundaries can create pain free zones. These zones can be crippling. A paradox exists because being pain free feels a lot like being healthy, but may not necessarily be healthy. The feeling of bliss may at times be unnoticeably unhealthy. Calibrating this paradox of comfortable health and painful health is challenging, requiring critical thought about personal perception and perspective with awareness of social norms. What you see as painless may really be a debilitating comfort zone. What you see as painful may really be the struggle to break free from illness. When we function with an idea of health as being a state or condition, it becomes purchasable, definable, or measurable. When I think of health as living, it becomes a relationship.
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| Black Lungs from Coal miner |
How I treat health will be reflective of what value I have for it. In the end I am learning to know the value, not cost, of my pain. I have learned to put myself in pain to connect with health, and am working on distinguishing when my pain is damaging my connection with health. I am learning to avoid the comfort of profiting from health, while also receiving gratitude from helping others connect with health. I am having a hard time with connecting with those who use the fear of pain as a way to improve their own quality of life. I aspire to hold health gently, as if it were lying next to me each night. I think asking her questions that she may have never been asked before.
Health, can you teach me how to love you...but without the pain? I think she might say. To love me is to love yourself, I don't need anything you don't, nor can I do without anything you also need. The health that I have in my life today has come from both pain and fulfillment. I have yet to know health without spending a little of both. The same goes for sickness, I don't hate you, but you seem to bring more pain than joy, and then after really seeing your contribution to life, I see you are a remedy to arrogance, toxic pride, and grandiosity. I struggle with loving you too.
