Category Archives: Health

On Experiencing and Expressing Gratitude

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NaBloPoMo 2016, Letters to Patients, Day 23

To Patients Seeking Words for Gratitude:

I found them!

As we head to gatherings tomorrow and seek words to honor and express the occasion, I’m particularly grateful today to see the post below by David Whyte.  Where, you ask?  Why on Facebook, of course!  Back tomorrow with my own original words.  Until then, peace and gratitude to you all!

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GRATITUDE

is not a passive response to something we have been given, gratitude arises from paying attention, from being awake in the presence of everything that lives within and without us. Gratitude is not necessarily something that is shown after the event, it is the deep, a-priori state of attention that shows we understand and are equal to the gifted nature of life.

Gratitude is the understanding that many millions of things come together and live together and mesh together and breathe together in order for us to take even one more breath of air, that the underlying gift of life and incarnation as a living, participating human being is a privilege; that we are miraculously, part of something, rather than nothing. Even if that something is temporarily pain or despair, we inhabit a living world, with real faces, real voices, laughter, the color blue, the green of the fields, the freshness of a cold wind, or the tawny hue of a winter landscape.

To see the full miraculous essentiality of the color blue is to be grateful with no necessity for a word of thanks. To see fully, the beauty of a daughter’s face across the table, of a son’s outline against the mountains, is to be fully grateful without having to seek a God to thank him. To sit among friends and strangers, hearing many voices, strange opinions; to intuit even stranger inner lives beneath calm surface lives, to inhabit many worlds at once in this world, to be a someone amongst all other someones, and therefore to make a conversation without saying a word, is to deepen our sense of presence and therefore our natural sense of thankfulness that everything happens both with us and without us, that we are participants and witness all at once.

Thankfulness finds its full measure in generosity of presence, both through participation and witness. We sit at the table as part of every other person’s strange world while making our own world without will or effort, this is what is extraordinary and gifted, this is the essence of gratefulness, seeing to the heart of privilege.

Thanksgiving happens when our sense of presence meets and fully beholds all other presences. Being unappreciative, feeling distant, might mean we are simply not paying attention.

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© 2015 David Whyte
from ‘GRATITUDE’
In CONSOLATIONS: The Solace, Nourishment and Underlying Meaning of Everyday Words.
© David Whyte and Many Rivers Press 2015

On Trudging the Road Forward

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img_4456NaBloPoMo 2016, Letters to Patients, Day 21

To Patients Who Doubt Your Ability or Endurance:

Don’t give up!  Stay on the path!!

Holy COW, Day 21!!  That’s three whole weeks that I have managed to post every single day!  So it really is true, the more times you try, the more likely you are to succeed.

I tried NaBloPoMo last year with “November Gratitude Shorts.”  It felt scary at first, then stressful, then deflating.  Then this past April, I did my first A to Z Blogging Challenge.  I had the insight to warn my family that I would be busier, and then halfway through announced that I would basically stop cooking until it was over.  It was not nearly the slog of NGS, but I did feel quite overextended and anxious for many days that month.  I submitted the last one with 30 minutes to spare on April 30.

The evolution here is worth examining, as it parallels other endeavors in life—exercise, parenting, the cultivation of other relationships… When I counsel patients around health behavior change, I often hear, ‘I tried that before, it didn’t work.’  This is usually when I point out that ‘before’ was a very different time.  Then they concede that since then, their experience, circumstances, and priorities may have evolved, sometimes drastically so, and maybe ‘it’ might work this time, who knows?

If we live consciously, observantly, and mindfully, I believe that all of our experiences make us stronger.  Trials and learnings in one realm of life inevitably pertain to all others.  If we can manage to see and appreciate this, then the potential for application and personal growth expands exponentially.  How much more could we accomplish if we just allowed ourselves to pick up and keep going, not only expecting to fall along the way, but anticipating it with gladness for the learning?

So let’s lighten up on ourselves, shall we?  Even if you have tried many times to quit smoking, establish an exercise routine, ‘eat healthier’ (whatever that means for you), and then consistently gone back to old habits, don’t give up!  Stay on the path!  Keep moving forward!  Try something new, learn something new, integrate, and continue!  Life is so much more fun when we don’t take it all so seriously, no?

So now that I have bragged on Day 21, what do you bet things will fall apart as we approach the Thanksgiving weekend?  Oh well, we shall see!  Even if that’s the case, I already have some valuable lessons stashed away:

  1. Try not so schedule so many conferences and presentations during NaBloPoMo.
  2. 500 words and 60 minutes are very reasonable limits for daily posts.
  3. Definitely warn the family; set expectations in advance.
  4. Protect the sleep!!

Happy Monday, all—and here’s to trudging the path together!

On Rest and Recovery

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NaBloPoMo 2016, Letters to Patients, Day 19

To Patients Who Feel Tired:

Take a break.

It’s the home stretch.  9/10 presentations since August are completed, last one in 10 days.  I feel positively exhausted.  I drove 2.5 hours to Champaign Thursday night, arriving around 11:30.  Sleep was not great that night… not for a couple weeks now, actually.  I presented at a conference yesterday morning, then attended other presentations the rest of the day.  I made new connections, re-established old ones.  I received an award, so humbling and touching, and engaged in lively conversation with colleagues at dinner.  I left Champaign by 10:30pm, and swung by to pick up my daughter from her sleepover just before 12:30am, because she wanted to come home.

I got out of bed at noon today.  Had some coffee and leftover carrot cake for—well, breakfast, I guess.  Folded laundry, paid some bills, cleaned off my desk.  The only things I have to do this weekend are write, work out, attend the middle school play, and maybe cook something.  It’s a weekend for much needed rest and recovery.

It’s been four months of intense learning, processing, sharing, and integration.  It’s maybe also been a year of angst, trying so hard to engage with ‘others’ in the personal political arena—mostly online.  Curiosity, probing questions, reading for understanding and hoping for others to do the same—I engaged in good faith.  Now I’m finished.

I have gone back on Facebook since my 24 hour fast this week, very occasionally getting sucked into reading diatribes about one thing or another.  I have minimized posting my own tirades, however.  I see a friend complaining about ‘the left,’ calling out the whole group as hypocritical.  I’m tired.  Tired of the generalizations and name-calling, tired of the fruitless arguments and echo-chamber goading.

So this weekend I’m resting and recovering.  I have reviewed and renewed my charitable contributions.  I’m trying to be more present to the family.  I’m considering my options for civic participation.  I’m saving my political curiosity and engagement for people I meet in person.  I’m sleeping.  A lot.

My last presentation this year will be to a new audience, outside of medicine.  I feel positively giddy with anticipation.  I need to be focused and my best—not just for them, but for me.  The energy I project can amplify exponentially if I get the resonance just right.  Then it recharges me, too.  And that can only happen if I’m rested and healthy.  So this downtime is my investment in future engagement.

What has you tired right now?  What do you need to recharge and re-engage?  Here’s hoping you find it.