There’s always something I’ve really loved about being sick.
One nice thing has to do with the complete freedom of societal expectations. Anything I was “supposed” to do that week has been suspended, any work or social obligations, anything at all. My entire life now revolves around “getting better”—a nice reprieve from the constant background buzz of the “should.”
But more than that, or plausibly because of it, sickness settles me into my body. My brain is out of the picture, anything that plans or shoulds or reasons about the future is out, it’s just whatever about my immediate environment beckons to me. If I want to lay out in the sun for hours, great, if I want to read languidly on the living room floor, amazing, if I want to take a bath and zone out, fantastic. The body is in charge, in a meaningful way.
I was very sick a few weeks ago, sicker than I’ve been in quite some time, and being that sick was a sharp reminder of how much I live in the dreamworld. Of how much of my mental time is spent elsewhere, in the future, in the past, in realities that do not currently exist. Sickness calls all of that into question. There is something so special and precious about reaching into the immediate. Something so beautiful about being able to walk down to the beach just because I felt like it, to roll out in the sun, to follow taste wherever taste leads.
I’m not gesturing at the meditative mindset, exactly. That mindset is aimed more at complete acceptance, at “being with whatever sensations arise.” The sickness mode is all about rejection. It rejects sensations of malaise and seeks out feelings of comfort. But it does so in this slow, bottom up process, one which follows gradients rather than backchaining from a should.
Don’t get me wrong, I like using my brain, and I don’t think shoulds are entirely bad. The dreamworld beckons for a reason, as dreams can sometimes reach back into reality. It is, in many ways, the core feature of life, and one of the most awe-inspiring and fantastic facts about the universe, this manifesting of the mind. But it is good, also, I think, to practice the immediate mode of being.
It’s also interesting to see how different the container of a week is from an afternoon. Often I try to “relax,” after a whole day of mental drive, and I do get little bits of it. I go down to the beach with a beer and my boyfriend, and we watch the seals and the waves, and it’s wonderful, but it also feels a bit rushed sometimes, like I can’t fully settle into it. Like there’s always something else “to do.” Spending a full week in sick mode, though, really puts a groove in the mind. I don’t wake up ready to spring into action as I normally do, I wake up and do whatever I want. It feels as though it is deeply a part of my orientation, in a way that I can’t get from just an evening.
I’m quite bad about taking real breaks, there’s always something my mind goes towards. But being sick takes the break for you, you have no choice in the matter. And I’m glad it did, because it helped me remember that breaks are important, real breaks. Breaks on the order of days, not hours. Days spent reaching into the immediate.