When we are young, we have a tendency to be carefree and prone to living life on a whim and sometimes that approach to life blows up in our face. The flip side is that often as we get older and remember all the mistakes that we made when we were younger, we swear that we will never make those mistakes again. So for the sake of being an adult or rather having the appearance of being an adult, we put ourselves in situations that we really don’t want to be in, we stay in places that we have long outgrown and we tolerate people we actually don’t care for and basically start living a life that at times we despise. Because sometimes we forget to listen to our inner voice, that voice that serves as our internal GPS system that rarely steers us wrong. The result is that one day despite the lies we tell ourselves and actually believe… all of that internal and emotional stuffing down and suppressing comes back up like an overflowing toilet of feces.
I guess you could that is what happened to me when after weeks of minor physical discomfort that was vague but annoying, I found myself in the ER a few days ago. I thought I was having a heart attack and at the time, the medical folks thought that might have been a possibility too. Oddly enough unlike past trips to the ER for panic attacks, I had no outward signs of anxiety…guess that yoga thing works. It turns out that I have a strained neck and an exceedingly tense upper body. My knots have knots. The stressors of the last year or more decided to take up residence in my body creating a level of tension; I didn’t even know was possible.
I thought I had been taking care of myself through this season of chaos and I suspect that the self-care that I engage in daily is the only reason this situation didn’t come to a head earlier. However it has become clear that this is less about self-care and crisis management and more about the fact that sometimes life deals us a hand and we actually have to take action with the hand of cards that we currently are holding. There are times in life when action is very much required and inaction is actually harmful, hell it might even be deadly. I believe that at times our bodies are guides for how best to live, sometimes illness and general lack of good health just happens much like shit and sometime they happen because of the choices that we make. Suddenly the minor health issues of the past year are starting to make sense to me, all clues to let me know that change is a coming. Now the choice is will I make the choices or will they be made for me?
Listen.