Friday, February 10, 2006
Existential Friday: illness and wellness
My flu is dragging on, putting me in a great position to relish feeling well again.
Illness is so existential: there you are, steeped in symptoms, wondering if you'll ever know the feeling of wellness again. Then you get better, and maybe for a day or two, you exult in how great you feel... isn't it wonderful to feel normal!
There it is -- your moment of zen. The splendidness of, not the extraordinary, but the ordinary. And then it passes -- feeling normal is a baseline we expect and take for granted. Until we get sick again.
Illness is so existential: there you are, steeped in symptoms, wondering if you'll ever know the feeling of wellness again. Then you get better, and maybe for a day or two, you exult in how great you feel... isn't it wonderful to feel normal!
There it is -- your moment of zen. The splendidness of, not the extraordinary, but the ordinary. And then it passes -- feeling normal is a baseline we expect and take for granted. Until we get sick again.
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welcome back to the land of the ungrateful, oscar! i had just the same experience a couple of weeks ago, when i finally crept out of my own flu. for two whole days i was smiling, beaming really, at the novelty of not feeling feverish or exhausted. but now i am back to my old self, annoyed at national politics, feeling sorry for myself as i awake early each day to teach, and grudgingly working on taxes and washing my kitchen floor. is the lesson here that we all should look forward to being sick? to try and be sick more often? or to buy some treacly little aphorism-on-a-refrigerator magnet to remind ourselves of the joys of merely being in ok health?
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: 8:32 AM, February 11, 2006
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