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What wake up call do you need? |
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Illness is a great teacher. People often ask me what I have learned since having cancer. Plenty - looking after myself as number one priority is the first thing! However I would rather have had the learning without the lesson. My wake up call was close - is yours?
We read about it all the time - the head of McDonalds who works way too hard, has a heart attack and dies at the age of 40 something, the small business owner who eats lunch at 4pm if at all who is diagnosed with Type 2 Diabetes, the young medical student who works two jobs to pay student fees and is bed ridden for three terms with chronic fatigue.
These are real wake up calls. They are scary, debilitating, and sometimes fatal.
And our reaction? Maybe one of secret criticism - "she obviously had no work life balance", or "he must have been avoiding something in their relationship", or "she just needed to take better care of herself."
We carry on with our own lives thinking, "That won't happen to me." We know we can handle the stress, the pressure, the workload.
Or so we think. Something in the back of our head niggles away at us. Sometimes we hear the voice, and it says something like this, "It's a beautiful day - get out for a moment at lunch", or "I'll just be half an hour late - my partner won't mind too much", or "I'll skip the work out tonight - I've got too much on" or "There's that negative voice again - must stop thinking negatively about myself."
We know - somewhere deep inside of us - that we are not taking care of ourselves properly - physically, emotionally, mentally, spiritually. And yet we push the limits.
It's not surprising that we get sick. Our reaction - it is a frustrating distraction - we get behind in work, we feel terrible, we can't sleep properly, we may vomit, blow our nose, suffer in pain. We can feel betrayed by our body. Often we get sick at the most inconvenient of times - a looming deadline, a wedding to attend, a presentation to give. So we stew in discomfort, annoyance, and generally blame our body for betraying us.
Yet we know - we were working too hard, or worrying too much, or being too negative - this is why we are sick.
The body is an amazing teacher. When we need to eat, it tells us we are hungry. When we need to sleep, it tells us we are tired. When we are grieving, it cries.
And yet if we are willing to heed the messages of our body - the messages of thirst, of hunger, of grief, why cannot we heed the messages of illness?
My question is - why do you need a life threatening disease to call you to action?
Most people do not take action because they are afraid. They are afraid that taking action will be a lot more painful and scary than carrying on as they are. They are afraid that the emotional baggage that is churned up will be harder to handle than suppressing it.
People get sick because they do not give themselves permission to live and love in the moment, they do not give themselves permission to feel things fully - they are afraid of their feelings - afraid they will dissolve and crumble if they feel their most feared emotions.
It's time now - let this be your wake up call - time to claim your life, your happiness, your joy. If not now, when?
Zoë Routh
Copyright Inner Compass 2006
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