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On Usefulness: Underneath It All, We Want to Be of Worth
What’s it worth? It’s a common question, perhaps a common-place one. We ask what a potential purchase is worth, what an object of perceived value is worth, and if we are ill then we often ask what an event is worth in terms of the time and energy we will spend there. It’s a fair question: is it good enough to justify what I am giving? Does it have a value equal to that which you gave? But when did we begin asking what humans were worth? I mean, darling just look at you… You are worth everything. EVERYTHING. (Click to Tweet!) The problem as I see it, is this:…
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Living Well With Fatigue
Do you consistently have enough energy? No? You aren’t alone. And while this isn’t a bulleted, 10-point-quick-fix article full of ginseng and grandiose promises, it is one neatly packed with valuable concepts to add some pep to your step. These thoughtful approaches have helped me live well, with fatigue and chronic illness for over 10 years, while earning a degree and building two thriving businesses. Living with illness that features symptomatic fatigue often leaves me too exhausted to sit up or turn over in bed. That same exhaustion may also have me regard basic tasks with a humdrum eye, “I don’t feel up to doing that right now…maybe I’ll try later…
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Claiming Compassion…For Yourself
“Everyone who is born holds dual citizenship, in the kingdom of the well and in the kingdom of the sick. Although we all prefer to use only the good passport, sooner or later each of us is obliged, at least for a spell, to identify ourselves as citizens of that other place.” ~Susan Sontag Be compassionate to your healing body, and your loving soul. To do so, to accept it, is the very essence of being human. And by allowing self- compassion, you free yourself from the inevitable exhaustion of straining to escape it. Pain ebbs and flows. Struggles arise and fall. They needn’t be set upon like they are…
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Death Driven and Relaxing Into Mortality
Death drives us. It’s inevitable. Often, it begins at that moment you realise you won’t live forever or that your time may never be enough. That whatever time you do have feels like far too little. With such a short, precious window on this beautiful Earth and (*gasp!*) having used up a big chunk of it already, being aware of your “end” is scary. After all, you have so many things to live, feel, do and dream! Acknowledging your own mortality, while gently relaxing into its reality, can be a huge, lifelong challenge. Am I aware of and driven by my own mortality? Yes. Death is a great motivator. Knowing that…
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Aspiration Is Not All There Is
Sunday 11 June Another wasted Sunday… Realise, as the long hot days freakishly repeat themselves, one after the other, that whatever I am doing I really think I ought to be doing something else…The more the sun shines the more obvious it seems that others are making fuller, better use of it elsewhere: possibly at some giant softball game to which everyone is invited except me; possibly alone with their lover in a rustic glade by waterfalls where Bambis graze, or at some large public celebratory event, probably including the Queen Mother and one or more of the football tenors, to mark the exquisite summer which I am failing to get the…
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