A month off-track brought me back to what I want to do in life, and why.
Rarely, if ever, in the past month was I aware of feeling like the real me, or of living in accordance with my mission in this life, or doing what I really want to do (my heart’s desire). Physical ailments may have been a reason, whether or not they were an excuse.
I’ve told about the sinus infection already:
For the past 3+ weeks, I’ve had a sinus infection, featuring headaches sometimes so severe I’m just beside myself in pain.
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I have enough self-awareness to accept that this is just What Is; I am to just go through it. There is no point in complaining, in whining “Why me?”, or being angry at God. No more point than in being angry at a traffic jam or thunderstorm. It is merely What Is.
Nonetheless, the physical pain sometimes translates into emotional pain; sometimes the emotional pain is what I feel instead of the headaches themselves. I become irritable, angry, and, especially, impatient.
About two weeks into that, a second problem appeared. I began having spells of what I took for hypoxia (oxygen deprivation) secondary to emphysema. There was no telling when a spell would begin or how long it would last.
My mind became immobile. I could carry on a conversation, but by myself, I could not think. The gears wouldn’t turn. In prayer time, I have my list of names to pray for, and I could not remember the next name.
My affect became immobile, too. It went “flat;” I had no emotions. My aura went gray; my world went gray.[1] The idea might come to choose to be happy, but my affect wouldn’t move.
My work being to write, being unable to think left me seriously impaired.
And then there were times I felt fine.
If I am to go through these times of impairment from time to time, I’ll just go through them. I’ll do what I can when I can. I can improve one thing: when my affect becomes immobile, I want it to be immobile in a place of joy.
Then one morning I woke up feeling completely well, physically and emotionally. I was back to my normal cheerful self.
Reflecting on what I’d just been through, it came to me that there are many, many different unseen reasons why people do not present their best selves.
Now, I have always been about seeking to alleviate suffering. I recalled a point made by Lawrence W. Althouse in the book Recovering the Gift of Healing. It served to mitigate my skepticism about the merits of healing prayer. He said the sheer alleviation of pain has merit in itself, as people find it hard to be their best selves while in pain.
Prayer is one way I can participate in the alleviation of suffering.
But people are in pain for all kinds of different reasons, and we may never know the real cause of any person’s pain.[2] Even a gifted intercessor may not receive the magic words (Matthew 8:8) that will unlock a given person’s healing. There are also those — I first learned about these from Althouse also — who refuse to be healed, who cling to their suffering like a badge of honor. They are called “treatment resistant.”
Words can heal in other ways.
Decades ago, I conceived The William Tell Show in response to the pain I heard on the airwaves in the world of talk radio.[3] If we can cast aside all theories, opinions, beliefs, ideologies and value judgments, and attend instead merely to What Is, we may be able to begin from a state of agreement.
What Is is indisputable.
That’s the whole point of Free Speech Handbook.
Trolls, like Mordochai, are normally treatment resistant.
I might can’t do anything about them. I might can’t do anything about Donald Trump.
I can do what I can do.
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[1]Related: “Seeing red” is real. But how does it happen?
[2]Related: Where does it hurt?
[3]Related: A star is born
[4]The link won’t work until 09/14/19.
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