In my collection of music, I have a playlist called "Devotion" and another one called "Devotion Main".
The first has several favourite songs for worship and for upbuilding my spirit. The second has the spiritual songs that always feed my soul, and are guaranteed to steady and encourage me, restore me to peace.
This is one of them.
After my post yesterday, reading comments about friends' health struggles, I was reminded of something I once heard Tom Cruise say on the Graham Norton show, about an injury to his ankle that happened during a risky film stunt. Oh, look, there's a little YouTube video of exactly the interview I'm talking about here.
What particularly arrested my attention was something he said right at the beginning of that clip, when Graham Norton asked him how he was, following the accident. Tom Cruise replies, "I am well. The ankle's still broken, but I am well."
Tom Cruise has been a Scientologist for some years (though I read that he may leave the organisation because of the family difficulties caused by belonging to it; don't know if that's true). His spiritual path will condition his outlook, of course, and I wondered if that underlay his interesting comment — making a distinction between his essential intrinsic wellness persisting despite physical illness or damage.
I stored his remark away as a helpful and interesting way of looking at the challenges of ageing, illness and difficult life conditions (whether neurological, psychiatric, social, relational, financial, political, or whatever).
"I am well. My ****** is broken, but I am well."
And it seemed to me to accord with that lovely song, It is well with my soul — "Whatever my lot, thou hast taught me to say it is well, it is well, with my soul."
This approach can be a bit confusing to people, of course. I've had to limit my preaching for health reasons, and stop leading retreats and taking funerals, and withdraw from a spectrum of relationships and interactions for the same reasons. I have to apply very disciplined caution in what I take on and take in, to keep functioning. And then when people courteously ask me, "How are you?" I will always say, "I'm very well, thank you." Not merely as a conversational convention, but because even though I do have some ongoing health problems, and have to take good care of myself, still I am indeed well. If you see what I mean.
I think Tom Cruise was on the right track, there, and the song helps foster the mindset he's describing.
There is convention within chronic illness communities of saying "I hope you are as well as you can be", demonstrating that I know you have a chronic illness, that I know you are not miraculously better, but I still hope you are doing ok..
ReplyDeleteI guess this is sort of what you are saying, but yours has a more positive spin.
I am really well, I have to live within my phyiscal, emotional and spiritual means, but I am relaly well. I suspect everyone has to live within those means, mine are less than most, but I am also more aware of them. I can't push through, my body will not let me at all. I suspect a lot of people are pushing on. Regardless... and I do feel like we as a society will pay for this at some point soon. Probably enviormentally, which I think is a massive indication of how we are all pushing beyond our means.
I think something people with all kinds of disabilities often run into is the assumption that they don't have the disability because they've taken good care of themselves - and that therefore they ought to be able to do all the activities they've carefully been avoiding, that has given them the appearance of ability. Like when I'm in short sleeves when others aren't, and they say, "Are you hot?" and I say, "No," and they say, "But you're in short sleeves!" and I say, "That's why I'm not hot."
ReplyDeleteAlso, if disability is your base state of being, then you might indeed be very well within your own parameters.
I have a friend who, post brain tumor, took to answering inquiries about his health with "I have good days and bad days, this is a GOOD one."
ReplyDeleteI think it was a good answer, it acknowledged all he had been through and the after affects and such, but also reassured friends that he was still solidly this side of the grave and moving forward in faith.
Also it sent a nice message to his body, after all our bodies hear everything we say.
16 years later he's still moving forward ; )
I think our generation is a little slow to learn we need to take care of ourselves.
Jen — I'm specially interested in that point you make about the ecological price we may may for pushing beyond our means. Yes, the Earth is a person with a body, on the macro-scale, and has all the limitations that come with physicality. Needing time to recover, opportunities to rest, good nutrition . . .
ReplyDeleteBuzz — "That's why I'm not hot" — haha, that's funny!!
Rapunzel — Good point about our own bodies hearing what we say! Like Masaru Emoto's experiments with water molecules.
Indeed, our bodies are mostly water, and water is very perceptive.
ReplyDeleteMysterious creation we live in ,aint it?
Ain't that the truth!
ReplyDelete