SICK?

Things That Break

Have you noticed that we don’t pay much attention to things until they break?

Take your wifi, so smoothly functioning for the last several months, never even a weak signal.  Its existence as invisible as the electronic waves it omits.                

And then, inexplicably, it goes down.  The thing that was so invisible to you before is now a source of great frustration, frenzied activity, even rage.

The same holds true for a hammer. 

Use it every day for 20 years with no problems and it’s a hammer.  Then the day your hammer breaks it instantly transforms into a “goddam mother f’king piece of crap” wooden stick with some metal attached.  (Well, supposed to be attached.)

Things that break bother us in proportion to how much we value them.

Think broken promises, broken relationships, and broken bones.

Getting Sick

Physical sickness is a form of breakage in your body.

A friend told me admiringly about an investment banker in Hong Kong who “didn’t sleep in a bed at all last week.”

This was a confusing thing to say and could lead to an endlessly amusing guessing game of what he slept in instead of a bed.  A baby stroller?  At the bottom of a bungee cord after a bungee jump?  Unclothed and handcuffed on the floor while Tantric Goddess Jasmine occupied the bed?

“How tall is he?” I asked.  I was going to start with the baby stroller and go from there.

“He slept on planes every night,” my friend whispered in awe.  “Red eye, right to work, red eye, right to work.  I’ve never seen him eating food.”

Which could lead to another endlessly amusing guessing game of what he ate instead of food. 

When did it become cool to not sleep and not eat?

At precisely what point in human history did exhaustion become a status symbol?

You’ve noticed how being sick or injured distracts from everything else.  It becomes very difficult to work, play, take pleasure, when one is sick.  Sickness demands our attention.  Like wifi that has suddenly broken, our body becomes obvious to us in sickness and oppressive in disrepair.

It’s almost as if there is a message in the sickness that we are being invited, no not invited, FORCED to pay attention to.

Sick of Your Job

While not physically sick, the research tells us that 70% of you reading this sentence are sick of your jobs.

I took this picture in Hong Kong near my home.

Believing that “happy is a better job” is something like believing that you are a houseplant that only flourishes with the perfect amount of sunshine, fertilizer, and water.

I’m going to give it to you straight. 

There is no place that always has the perfect amount of sunshine, fertilizer, and water.

So instead of defining your happiness by your better job (which may soon be the job you are sick of, hate and complain incessantly to your friends about) it may be more useful to focus on thriving in an environment with less than optimal sunshine and other nutrients.

We approach the end of 2015, looking ahead to 2016.   Things will get better for us next year. 

It’s nice to think so. 

If our job becomes too unbearable we can find a new one and that will make us happy. 

Maybe.

What are you sick of? 

Right now, at this moment, what are you sick of?  What’s the message contained in that “sickness” that is demanding your attention?

I could give you some advice.  The same advice that I was given by several well-meaning people when I fell ill recently. 

Drink more fluids.

Take your vitamins.

Get some sleep. 

None of which was remotely helpful for me, and may not be for you either, so instead I’ll leave you with a question. 

What would it take for you to feel well again?