Health. Care.

Notes on a week — September 26, 2016

I’ve spent the better part of the past two weeks as sick as a dog; apparently I early adopted both an iPhone 7 Plus, and the flu this season. Then I doubled down on my immune system with a bout of bronchitis, which Internet doctors tell me is a rather natural progression. Having never before had a one-two punch of sickness, this wasn’t natural to me.

The whole thing’s given me a lot of time to think about how sickness works in the modern age, how even the common cold or flu and a “natural” acute bronchitis can be just a terrible strain on a person.

I’m fortunate that I largely get to work from home, so this two week stretch hasn’t forced me to miss work or use sick days, but I’m the exception and not the rule. On top of that, I’m without insurance at the moment. Thankfully, walk-in clinics help provide access to mostly-affordable medical attention and medicine, but again what’s affordable for me [exception] might not be available to the everyone [rule].

The thing is, care and health aren’t just about medicine and doctors, sick days and time at home; this stretch has really helped me reflect on the karmic balance of what comes in and what goes out. If we treat our bodies properly, we hope that they will treat us well in return. Put good in, get good out.

Sadly, this time at home has allowed me to see that I could do even more to treat mine better, and maybe it’s the combination of illnesses conjoined to the reality that I’m getting older, but it’s truly settled in that I’ve got one shot at this and I need this body to go the distance.

So, even though I’m still not fully recovered and I can’t quite hit the gym tomorrow, I’m working on the mind-over-matter part of things for now, and the rest will follow.

I’m devoting energy at the moment to mindfulness and keeping an awareness of the thoughts and actions that leave my body. I’ll call this getting good out. Staying mindful of the good output will carry me along until I’m healthy enough to start putting good back in.

In the meantime, all of this time to think has also inspired me to get back to writing a weekly post, which is something I used to do a long time ago. A little odds-and-ends kind of thing that will sometimes be ramblings, other times rants, and during the in-betweens it’ll just be something else.

I’ll also try to end each week with a tiny list of suggestions — things that have captured my attention or imagination or admiration. For instance, here are two for this week:

• Ron Howard directed an excellent documentary on the Beatles’ touring years, called “Eight Days A Week” and if you’re a music and/or movie fan, it’s totally worth your time. I know it’s in select cinemas around the world but I caught it on Hulu, where you can see it uninterrupted by commercials. Strongly recommended. Here’s a trailer: http://youtu.be/0fFyZzqPDws
• I finally received my aforementioned iPhone 7 Plus and while I’m still getting used to its size and differences, I’m loving the camera. As a long time beta tester I jumped on the early release of the new camera software and it’s definitely snazzy. I took one test photo and I not only loved it, but it left me with a fun image to support my goal of mindfulness during my recuperative period. Here’s that photo:

So that’s it for this week. Next week it’ll be something else. In the meantime, take care of yourself and others. Put good in, get good out.

Peace.

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