Finally the fog is clearing from our family wide, influenza party that destroyed us last week. Kids are back at school and kinda and we’ve even had some semi ‘productive’ days at work. My parents who were visiting from NZ have forgiven us for giving them the worst flu they’ve had in years and we are down to one box of tissues used per day.
You realise how much you take for granted when you become sick. Simple things like not having a constant headache or actually being able to breathe through your nose. When you’re well you don’t think twice about these things but when you’re sick, you’d kill to be able to have clear sinuses again. I certainly would have.
This is by design of course. The human brain is hardwired to pay more attention to threatening events than positive one. From an evolutionary perspective it is not very costly for us to make 99 mistakes of thinking the rustling in the bushes is a tiger, when in fact it's the wind. Only one mistake of thinking it isn’t a tiger, when it is, would lead to us being eaten!
This is why, even in some of our most joyful moments we tend to go to dark places. I don’t know how many times I’ve ruined my own special moments by thinking the worst. This week for example I’ve had lots of time to watch Alice sleep - being unwell, she has required a lot more of our attention in the middle of the night. While this sucks for us, it also has given us these beautiful moments where she has just snuggled in next to me and fallen asleep. So precious I could cry but then I start to think… I hope she’s ok… god… I hope she can breathe properly through that snotty nose… god… I hope she is going to wake up in the morning!!
It's really easy to catastrophize and when you realise that it's actually what our brain has been paid to do (access our surroundings for danger) it means we have to be proactive and help bring awareness to the pleasant, joyful and positive experiences that occur around us each and everyday. We don’t have to wait till we get sick to appreciate how great it is that we can breathe through our nose. We can be grateful for that right now.
The majority of our everyday life is so habitual that we don’t even notice the good parts. How often do you just arrive at the next destination without really noticing what you’ve just done? It could be dropping the kids at school or going to work. So much of our lives is automated that I often find myself just ‘arriving’. Being where I need to be without spending too much time thinking about it.
Over the last few weeks I’ve been taking part in a Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) course as part of my mental health care plan. The course is based around the teaching of Jon Kabat-Zinn and teaches participants to cultivate an observant, accepting and compassionate stance towards our own internal experiences.
The number one objective is to be mindful of the moment you are in right now. When life gets busy, which is the default mode for almost everyone I know, we forget about the individual moments and it often takes a bad experience (like being sick last week) to remind us of how good we normally have it.
My homework this week was to look for everyday pleasant experiences and having just been unwell I felt like a drugged up hippy from the 70’s, I was oozing positivity man!! The sun coming through the leaves was beautiful. My electric blanket is amazing. That cup of tea is divine! While it was homework this week, the point is that we can always be aware of these things happening around us if we give ourselves the space to do so.
This morning I was able to go for a run for the first time in two weeks. Running has become a really important part of my mental wellbeing and not being able to run is something I have deeply missed while being sick. I ran this morning with my new lens of appreciation on. I was slow, but I was steady. It was 6am so pitch black and freezing in Ballarat but I felt so lucky to be able to do it. There was a strong wind and part of the run I was met with resistance but instead of fighting it, I felt my muscles working harder, therefore making me stronger.
“If you take care of each moment, you will take care of all time. There is only one time when it is essential to awaken. That time is now.”
Jack Kornfield.
