When I see people on Facebook talk about how overwhelmed and overworked they are (pulled in a million different directions by their kids' commitments and their weekends and vacations are much more stressful than their work week) I think -- there is a solution to your stress. You hold the key. You set the pace of your life. You can lean in or lean out. You can overload your kids with activities, overcommit yourself, try to conquer each day as if you were fighting the battle for your life, or you can learn to live with less. Less stress. Less busyness. Less saying yes.
One of the blessings of living with chronic illness, is that you begin to understand how you too once were on this Merry-Go-Round and how it once ruled your life. Chronic illness forces you to not just slow down, but to stop completely. You learn to say NO a lot. You are forced to lean out and you realize the world doesn't end just because you aren't busy every single minute of every single day.
Sure, a lot of the time I still get frustrated that I can't do what I used to do and that I can't keep pace with my contemporaries. I too sometimes buy into the myth that we have to be productive and busy multi-taskers in order to be of value and use to society. And I admit that over the last two years in dealing with chronic illness I sometimes sunk into dark places. Without being busy, I often felt unmoored. But it gave me a lot of time to to go inward and really think about life and what truly matters.
For most of us, life is a whirl of activities and endless to-do lists. We actively pursue the next pleasurable experience that will make us feel whole and alive. For those of us who are chronically ill, and forced off the Merry-Go-Round, we start to see things differently. We learn to 'take what we can get.' We lower our expectations about what makes a GOOD DAY. We learn to prioritize, because limited health and energy means something has to give. Some days, EVERYTHING gives.
It all comes down to learning to accept the things you can change, and those you can't change, and understanding the difference.
In today's frantic society, stress is often self-induced. We complain and yet we take on more and more because it fulfills our need to be productive and useful and of purpose. So a lot of this stress pertains to things we actively choose and could give up if we truly wanted to. We only think it isn't a choice because we've been conditioned to believe that modern life must be run at a hyper-frenetic pace.
For those of us who are chronically ill, and are lagging in the race, we truly don't have a choice. There are days we cannot change the circumstances of our life. We never know which way the wind is going to blow. And yet, like everyone else on this earth, we have the power to control HOW we deal with the day-to-day realities of our illness and our life. We can lean into the stress or we can lean out.
Over the last two years, as I've dealt with repeated frustration over my lack of progress towards health and complained about not living the full and vibrant life I used to lead, I've also come to a startling conclusion:
Perhaps our days aren't meant to be conquered. Perhaps they are meant to be savored.
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