Can Illness be Positive?

I spent the last few days of 2008 ill in bed. I now ask myself the question: Can illness be positive?

I accepted that I was ill, allowed my body to fight off the infection and went to bed for a few days. I lay there  practicing mindfulness. This meant that I observed myself being ill. I noticed that my internal chatter – the constant flow of thoughts and words that normally race through my mind – was very quiet. Most of the time I was not sleeping, I was not awake, I was somewhere in between.  Though there was some pain I stopped labeling the pain as ’suffering’. It was just ’sensation’.

Was this a positive experience? It felt neither positive or negative, my mind somehow detached from it all, floating in a strange bubble of consciousness in which I just allowed it all to happen, knowing that I was in a temporary state, knowing that the illness was not serious and it would pass in its own good time.

Then sometime on New Year’s Day afternoon, the pain left, the illness evaporated. Now I am left with a lack of vitality and must take it easy for a day or two as my body recovers from its battle of fighting the invading infection that attacked my kidneys.

Can illness be positive?  What I found was how much I take my body for granted. I reflect on the fact that I don’t exercise enough, and don’t watch my diet well enough.  Watching television today I was struck by how many celebrity keep fit and slimming DVD’s are being advertised. After the Christmas excess of eating and drinking, many people must be concentrating on their health. Maybe you are one of those people who make a New Year’s resolution to be slimmer and healthier. One positive resolution I take from all this is to increase my fitness, treat my body better, knowing that I cannot do all the other things in my life well without a fit body. I trust you feel the same.

I am grateful that my body has been strong enough to heal itself without the need to visit a doctor or take drugs apart from some painkillers.

Illness can be positive if positive things are learnt from your illness. Illness detaches you from your everyday routine. You are plucked from your life for a while, then merged back into your life healed, but also somehow changed and renewed, with a new perspective on your life. This is a positive process.

Now, having listened to my body, I cancelled the party I was due to hold this weekend. I will rest and recuperate for a while then pick myself up and walk on!

Have a happy and positive new year.

Stephen Williamson