Go Slow

No time to think! Days are spent in a frenzy of activity. Mondays morph into Fridays without respite. Weeks fly by, hardly acknowledged as being different to the ones that preceded them.

My children have sprinkled fairy dust on themselves, growing them like weeds in the night, completely unnoticed by myself. Both were caught out on a Judo scale, each a tenth heavier than just a couple of weeks ago. A perusal of old photographs clearly highlights their slow march to manhood. Even working from home I missed it all. Just too busy!

Then came yesterday, a day as long as my legs. Hours of tedious attention to detail work that sapped my brain of its joy. Bed again a welcome refuge from the demands of my little world. Has my little world grown too big, too demanding, and too out of control? Could this be true given how much I like my world, the freedom, the daily unpredictability, and the value I think I add to other people’s worlds?

No my world is not the problem, but perhaps the speed with which it spins. I think of Atlas with the world balanced on his shoulders and wonder if he would hear my plea. Just a little slower, old man! I know the control is within my grasp. Old Atlas is a myth, I can make it all stop.

Do I want to stop? Perhaps this nascent drive for action and results is a rush in itself. Without it, I may be lost and adrift in a sea of meaninglessness. Perhaps a pause is the better option, a meaningful combination of pace and delivery against nurturing time out for my own well being.

Even this writing has bled some of the frustration from my fingertips, washing my keyboard clean of its fear of touch. Such a short time spent within, and yet so remarkable a feeling of calm and acceptance. My drug of choice is not the pace of delivery but rather the short periods of introspection that give rise to a deepening of will, which feed every part of my life.

And a smile tugs at my lips.

On Vacation

I can feel it!

My life over the last 5 days has been a haze of pain and drugs. A problem tooth in my mouth has reacted rather strongly to the concept of me being on holiday. To the extent that my gums, my top jaw, my lip, my nose, and cheeks have swollen! My top lip got so big at one point that its inside had rolled outside. It even got sunburnt, which is not surprising considering that it has never seen the sun except for the reflections off my teeth!

Right now I feel as if I have the worst head cold ever, have gotten terribly sunburnt on my face, and have been hit in the face with a baseball bat. That’s probably an under exaggeration! I feel much worse than that!

I am very lucky that I do not feel pain...

But this I can feel...

It has however given me time to pause and I am a little surprised at some of the gems of insight that have come to the fore. So instead of writing about my holiday woes, I will beguile you will some of my new hallucinated pearls of wisdom!

1. I have not been able to smile in days. As a result, I have this feeling that I am unhappy. Truth be told, I am rather unhappy. The thing is that smiling often makes a bad situation better somehow, whether it be the hormones released by one’s body or the purely psychological reaction of one’s mind to smiling. I miss smiling; it certainly helps make bad things bearable!

2. Intense pain saps ones inner resources. It must take a super human effort for any cancer, or any other painful disease sufferer to get up every day and work through debilitating pain. This has to be especially difficult when there is no end in sight. For the first time in my life, I have considered how difficult it is to wake every morning, if one slept at all, and face another day of painful life. I have never understood how anyone could chose to die rather than live out the gift of their life. Now I have an inkling of how terrible this kind of life can be. Whilst I still cannot condone ending one’s life, I certainly have a huge respect for those who chose to continue living out each day of pain, and then doing it with a smile! Respect!!

3. Time has become incredibly important for me. Weird considering that I do not wear a watch. I cannot believe how I have hungered for the end of each four hour interval of my day so that I can get my next pain relief fix. At first, the pain medication lasted about an hour, and then the next three hours were spent chewing on ice and dunking my head in the ice machine. At long last, pain medication is now lasting longer than four hours at a time. However, I now have an inkling of how a drug user must feel; how life revolves around that next high. My next high is really just a semblance of normality. For a druggie; I guess the high become their semblance of normality too. How difficult it must be for an addicted person to give up their fix. I won’t have to work too hard to rid myself of these drugs once my tooth issue is resolved. I can think of nothing worse than getting rid of the drugs that give me the grasp on reality that I crave.

4. Life goes on whether you want to be in it or not.

5. I have realised how blessed we are to have life within us. Our very health, the thing we most take for granted, is so fragile, and yet an incredible gift. We should never ever forget this!

6. Two years ago, I set myself a number of tough life goals. One of them was to run 2 half marathons in less than 100 minutes each. I have snagged an invite to the Knysna half marathon on Saturday, my big chance to tick off half a goal and prove myself. This episode has left me with a clear understanding that life has more to offer than the goals I set it. That perhaps the real value of life is in living out each moment, and not meeting the arbitrary measurements that I have set to it. If I run on Saturday or not, I will need to take it as it comes. If I do run, I need to enjoy the race as opposed to my challenge. If I meet my challenge at the same time, well then it was a bonus that was meant to be!