Everyone of us has been hurt. It’s not something we like to remember though, so we get good at forgetting, disassociating and coping.
Over a lifetime, we get very good at this. There are unlimited ways that we have discovered to hide from things we don’t want to see. We are supported by the distractions of the modern day which abound like never before.
As we are drawn to these digressions selective memory becomes handy. If we fill our consciousness with enough busy-ness we can obliterate – amongst other things – the memories we don’t want.
But when the chips are down, our memory increases its reach. In our suffering the superficial dissolves, and we become more vulnerable. Thus it is with illness.
5 years ago I was in hospital with a tropical dis-ease that no one could correctly diagnose. I was presented with medications that I found unacceptable, and refused to take.
Over a period 3 months as the tests continued I grew weaker and weaker, eventually immobile and in severe pain. The closer I got to the low point, the more real I became. Unable to do anything physically – not even emails – I had no choice but to hunker down to survive a rough ride.
The less able I become, the more I opened. I had some of the deepest conversations and learned how much my friends and family loved me – just the way I was.
It did eventually turn round, I got correctly diagnosed and then treated with the right medicine, and have since come back to my full strength, albeit a little shell-shocked.
I thought a lot about recovery – many long nights hoping for it. When I heard the doctors use the word it struck me how we use it to say ‘get better’, but we don’t think about what it really means – to ‘re-cover’ yourself.
I remember once many years ago, my brother said to me, “When you’re ill you are so much more reachable, but when you get better you are hidden again.” Ouch. It was true. As soon as I got better I’d be back in the fast lane, surging forwards though a list of appointments and deadlines – forgetting those closest to me.
So what if we dis-cover instead of re-cover?? Isn’t that what happens when we get ill and don’t have the strength to support the Act of living – we are too tired to act and more more of our true self is revealed?
Yet as we get better, we tend to cover up again, to bolster ourselves on re-entry to a world that deep down, in our truest core, we know is not ours. It’s just a construct, and in order to tend to our most mundane needs we are convinced that we have to fit back into the matrix. Thus the cover-up begins.
Why should we be surprised to hear of cover-ups at governmental and international levels when it is just a reflection of who we are – inside?
So what if, next time you are ill and weakened – or even if not – you take a couple of moments to re-member who you really are underneath the coping and survival systems you have in place?
Could you trust that it is okay to reveal deeper parts of your being? Is it possible that there is greater strength in vulnerability than there is in the act?
