10 things I would never have thought I would have learned from Lyme, but did: 1.Love people for who they ARE, not for what you WANT them to be. Though I thought i did this prior to getting sick, i wasnt even close. Getting Lyme really helped me to understand why some friends reacted with such support, and others seemed to run the opposite direction. At first I believed this to be a bitter lesson in now knowing who my real friends are,” but b/c Lyme indirectly introduced me to the myers briggs community, this in turn helped me to make sense of why each person responds to life in different ways. And knowing, understanding, and applying the subtleties of personality theory to those around me, I was able to love, forgive, and accept the people in my life for being the way they are, for all their beauty and all their shadows, both. 2. No one has the full political truth. I used to think anyone who wasn’t a radical lefty was an ignorant or un/mis-educated person and/or a greedy bastard. Turns out the radical right (educated ron paul types) has a lot to offer that I feel the radical left misses (and vice versa). Had I not gotten lyme, I would likely never have come across people who could teach me this, being that I surrounded myself mostly with people who thought about the world much like myself. 3.“If you think you’re a better person or more spiritual b/c you don’t watch TV, you’re in an ego trap.” Turns out not all people who watch TV or play on the computer are brainwashed, consumer-conformist fools like I used to think, lol! I did not own a television for about a decade b/c I wanted to fully own the concept of “go outside and live your life instead of living through a box”, but it turns out certain TV shows can be really stimulating and I’m finding there is nothing to feel guilty about in watching and enjoying some of my free-time in this way. Same can be said of the computer. When I was at my sickest and couldn’t leave the house, Lyme exposed me to a world where when at my worst, the only social support I could experience WAS virtual. Facebook is a blessing for the chronically ill and immobile. 4.Gurus and teachers exist in all shapes and sizes. If I ever had any doubt before (which I didn’t), these three little fur-ball kittens in my life stick through everything with me through thick and thin, teaching me lessons daily on love, acceptance, and surrender. …and perhaps most important of all, they taught me that “we just don’t know enough to worry.” 5. I’m just spirit. Lyme helped me find my spiritual path. I was always driven towards wanting to devote myself to one, but never knew which one, b/c I loved aspects of many. Until lyme, I was just a curious, eclectic spiritual-knowledge-gatherer, picking and choosing what I liked. Now I have faith. I am everything and everything is me. 6. Be thankful for the little things. Even though it’s been over 2 years since I wasn’t able to sit myself down on a toilet or put a fork in my mouth, I still laugh to myself on occasion with pure joy when I consciously realize that I CAN and AM doing these things now. Without having had lyme, I don’t think I’d be able to appreciate the little things as much or as often. I can walk up the stairs! I can lift my head! I can move my arm without screaming in agony! …and even when I couldn’t do these things, there was always countless things to be grateful about. There always is. 7. You can’t control life. Plan as you may, life will take you where you need to be. For me? Despite my initial resistence, life brought me to white sandy beaches and warm gulf waters and jungles and tri-colored sunsets. Wow. I couldnt have imagined it better myself. 8. What we do to the planet, we do to ourselves. While I believed this in *theory* before, it never really sunk in until I realized just how wide spread multi-faceted chronic diseases are sweeping the globe. Just as careless human behavior is deforesting the amazon and causing ocean acidification, our vulnerable bodies are experiencing much of the same, for many of the same reasons. Pollution doesn’t just affect “nature.” Well, yes it does. …but we ARE nature. 9. Apocolyptic threats (of any kind) are nothing to fear. When your own life has been violently threatened and you’ve had to accept and come to terms with the possibility of personal extinction, world-wide extinction doesn’t feel any different. To me, MY world WAS ending, and yet I’m ok. we’re always ok. 10.“Some people are so poor, all they have is money.” Having lyme, with a pricetag of around $75,000 out of pocket, has brought me to having to declare bankruptcy. ...But for everything else this diagnosis has brought me that’s positive, it seems like more than a fair trade. id do it all again in a heartbeat.
Posted on: Wed, 06 Nov 2013 22:25:13 +0000
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