Getting Serious

I have a life threatening illness.

That statement still seems absurd to me.  There is a huge disconnect between that statement and how I consider my life, and how I feel in my body.  It simply does not compute.

But apparently it is true.

I was laying in my acupuncturist's treatment room the other day, stuck like a porcupine, feeling extraordinarily relaxed, and I started thinking about the ordeal before me.  How radically upset the apple cart is, and how it will continue being upset for the foreseeable future.  How long (and short) each day has become as I savor its sweetness and race against the clock to get things done.  How my prioritization of time has become so very important.  How many things have changed for the better and how many things have, let's be honest, changed radically for the worse.

I was thinking about who I would be when this is over.  Whether I will learn my lessons or whether I will just say, whew, ducked that bullet, and go back to my old wearying ways.  I was wondering if I would remember the good things that have changed in my life in the last 23 days.  The way I'm eating now is making me feel vibrant, light, energized, nourished.  My increased exercise keeps my anxiety at bay, my mood buoyant, my brain clear.   (Well, most of the time.  It is an extreme moment, after all.)  I hope I remember these lessons.
 
I was thinking a lot about my tendency to take my responsibilities too seriously, always striving for completion, always pushing towards excellence and the fulfillment of my commitments.  I was wondering if that was truly a fatal flaw or if it's actually my greatest strength.  (Like all super powers, it's both.)  I was wondering if that was going to change with this illness, or whether I would just keep striving and working and pushing through the second I am able to again.

I was also wondering if I would ever get the hang of being able to stop a project in trouble before it's finished, in order to take time off, in order to stop for a moment, in order to regroup and replenish my body and soul.

I was wondering, as always, what to do about my outside commitments, and how to extricate myself from them without letting my colleagues down.  I was wondering about the people I love, and whether it would ever be possible to tell them no, for now, because I came first.

I love doing for others.  It does give me pleasure. I am a fiercely interested person, interested both in people and in their ventures, and that has always translated into too many projects and too many commitments.  I love them all, I do. And I tend to find my pleasure in fixing problems for highly challenging projects, finding the creativity in that, finding my job in other people's solutions.  I rent my fulfillment rather than owning it.

I suddenly realized this is a call to adventure.  It has all the makings of a quest, one fraught with actual mortal peril, and one in which the stakes are high.  It was not my choice to initiate this call, but I have answered it.  I will take the journey.  And at the end of this journey, I will be different.  I don't know how, but I can set some intentions.  I can determine the nature of this quest and follow its unknown path with that in mind, a guiding star to follow.

Like all heroes' journeys, this one will be transformative.  I am being plunged into the unknown, down into the abyss, and -- with the aid of helpers and guardians along the way -- I will eventually return to the land of the known.  But things will be different.  I will be different.  It's up to me to determine which treasures I will be seeking.  I need to understand what the true nature of this quest actually is.

For better or worse, deservedly or not, I'm going to have many months in which these questions are going to be put to the test.  I am going to have to learn, with agonizing repetition, how to read the needs of my body and put them against the needs of my outside commitments and people. I am going to have to look at my deepest, most entrenched habits and desires, and weigh them against time, and health, and rightness for my soul. I am going to have to learn where to put my creative energies and when to spend that energy on myself or others.  I am going to have to get good at this.

It's time to get serious.

It's time to get serious about laughing more, and playing more, and stopping more.  It's time to get serious about this thing called relaxing.  It's time to get serious about understanding what the balance should be between my doing for others and my doing for myself.  It's time to get serious, so I can continue on with a whole new set of weapons in my arsenal.

It's time to get serious about writing.  It's time to note that the incessant flow of words from my fingertips needs to find their path again, be channeled into something that only I can bring into the world.

It's high time, and past time, to tend to my own creative projects, whether that is running my own company or writing my own words.  To own my own challenging projects, rather than to commit my talents to other people, getting my satisfaction by helping others succeed.

It's time to get serious about who I am, why I'm here on the planet, and to spend my days actually being not so serious.  It's time to both loosen up, and get down to the work at hand.  It's time to find the lightness and the space, rather than just keeping my head down and doing.

I have always had a life threatening illness.  I just haven't been so acutely aware of its nature right now.

It's called life.  And we are all afflicted.