Our still undecorated tree...ah, the challenges of a new kitten!
Listening to: Something extra mellow (and another for some cool animation).
Bliss: After a morning of feeling very ill, it's the simplest of things today: excellent, homemade toasted bread; some strong espresso; a warm blanket; a good book; some animal friends.
After a night and morning with an extreme headache, my mind is not functioning at a very high level, to say the least. I feel a bit stunned. A lot numbed.
Where are these headaches coming from lately, I wonder.
It is too easy to blame myself when I don't feel well. Do you do this? It's a fine line between taking control of your health and beating yourself with your weaknesses.
On one hand, I know that my health is completely up to me. I try to eat well; I do yoga; I ride my bike; I get outside.
But on the other hand, is this just a fallacy of the time we are living in? Is this just an extreme ego thing? Are we discounting factors beyond us?
I am reading the new Malcolm Gladwell book Outliers: The Story of Success, and he opens with the story of a town in eastern Pennsylvania. A town comprised entirely of transplants from Italy. Some doctors realized many years ago, that the inhabitants of the town were only dying from old age -- no heart disease, nothing.
So they started looking for the reason and they looked at typical things, the things that we seem to think matter -- food, drink, exercise. But none of it could be explained through these normal avenues.
Then the team of doctors and sociologists created a theory: these people were healthy because they were happy and they were happy because of the tight knit community they had created. They all knew they were loved and watched out for.
We are just starting to understand the implications of these findings.
I am loved and taken care of; I also eat well and do all the other things we think are important.
So, again, what the heck with these headaches?
Perhaps there isn't an answer and perhaps that is the lesson for me: sometimes things are just what they are and we have to accept them and in accepting them, going with the flow, we can eventually repair them. Trying to fix things sometimes is too akin to fighting things. Expectations about success can add to stress.
Let go, my headaches may be whispering to me.
A detail from above.
13 comments:
I missed you this morning! I'm sorry you didn't feel well, hopefully by now you do...
Sometimes a headache is just a headache, doncha think? If you don't, did you ever look it up in Louise Haye's book? Sometimes that is suprisingly (to me) accurate. And sometimes it's just a headache :)
Whatever it is, I hope it goes away and doesn't come back.
Your tree looks lovely even undecorated, I think!
Best wishes with the letting go. I think that'll help. :)
I've never had Bliss during a headache.
And, I never looked for a message while my head pounded out the tune of pain. Skipped dancing too.
Two aspirin and most headaches go away (unless you work with the person).
Perhaps you are a tad young to remember TV broadcasts mandated by law saying:
"THIS is a test of the Emergency Broadcast System!"
The next 45 seconds were filled with the highest pitched, loudest blare, on the order of
"E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E"
Just about the time you went nuts, the screech stopped, and the "voice" came back on, in jest, saying:
"This concludes our test of the Emergency Broadcast System. Had this been a real emergency, you would have been instructed to tune in to your public radio or tv"
Then, they skip out of your life.
These were common in our fight against the godless communists and when nuclear war was imminent, requiring kids to roll up in a ball and hide under their desks, as the entire community was about to be vaporized.
We no longer fight godless communists; their country went bankrupt.
Nuclear war seems to be coming back in vogue on the news, but not enough to run a test of The Emergency Broadcast System.
However, like the dire and imminent warning from days of yore, a headache is simply a test of the Emergency Bliss System.
Your headache is a test and only a test.
"E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E"
"Your headache concludes the test of the Emergency BLISS System. Had this been a real emergency, you would have been instructed to tune in to your public blogs on bliss, sip tea from the Republic of Tea Fair Trade Specialty Brands,
[I recommend Cranberry Blood Orange, tho pricey], or decorate the tree."
I will light my cinnamon candle and add a prayer on your behalf, that as the essence drifts upward, your headache joins the vapor and leaves you too.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
ps. of all these unique handles I have learned here, I thoroughly enjoy "Random Amber" for a name.
I think of it at each red or green light while driving, always slowing down, for some random amber.
There is a lot of it out there!
God Bliss You.
I like the Be Good Tanyas song....I've never heard them before (and gotta admit that I've always tended to associate the name "Tanya" with a girl who was kind of the Lucy Van Pelt of my first grade class).
I occasionally see magazine articles profiling centenarians, and it's interesting: one one page there'll be someone who's never had a drink or a smoke and has lived her whole life in a peaceful mountain village and seems to love everybody. Then, on the next page, there'll be some nasty old codger who's been drinking whisky and smoking cigars for since he was twelve, and seems obsessed with putting down the kids these days....
What I take from that is that there are certainly lots of things we can do physically and mentally to make and keep ourselves healthy and happy but, ultimately, to think we can control the universe around us and every affect it can have on us--from air pollution to meteors falling out of the sky, is, as you suggest, an egoistic fallacy....
As for headaches specifically, I know I was getting them nearly every day for a while, to the point that I can only hope I didn't do too much damage to my liver with all the ibuprofen, before finally realizing they were all coming from tension in my upper back and neck. Actually, simply realizing that didn't do me much good until a yoga teacher showed me a five minute neck protocol that I now do every day. But, of course, headaches come from lots of causes. Here's hoping you work yours out soon....
I agree there can be a danger of blaming self for illness - it's one of the things that makes me uneasy about that book and film "The Secret".
If you're getting a lot of headaches, have you had them checked out?
And, er, strong espresso? Maybe not such a good mix with a headache.
I like the Malcolm Gladwell story - I've been wondering whether to get that book.
Ha! I only had a chance to read your post this morning, but it seems that we are on the same wavelength. What would happiness really be like if we just let be and let it come to us?
Have you read anything by Adriana Trigliani - I think her novels are about that same area of PA. Quick, sweet little reads that I love around Christmas for some reason.
Oh, and our tree has been naked since Tuesday. We're giving Seamus time to make friends with it au natural. Tonight we put on It's a Wonderful Life and find all the glass ornaments and really test him!
I hope you are feeling better!
I can remember the exact moment I got my first migraine at the age of 13. Moments later I was in the nurse's office throwing up. For me the pain of migraines always led to hours and hours of throwing up. I was getting them upwards of six times a month sometimes. At the age of 25, I worked really really really hard with food, allergies, stress, exercise, and by the age of 27, I was migraine free. I have had one in the past 13 years, so any time I get a headache that even RESEMBLES a migraine, like yesterday (with the throwing up), I go on HIGH ALERT, and start looking at my life for signs of stress, over-indulgence, etc.
Alas, I forgot yesterday that I had just had my braces adjusted, and right now, the main thing that is happening in my mouth is that they are moving my jaw, literally. Thus the headache. DUH! And what a relief to realize this. Though an increase in yoga would not hurt, either.
Caffeine. Yep, Tess, it can be bad, but it can be really good. There's a balance to it. The right amount has been proven to increase oxygen in the brain; too much and you start getting what they call "rebound headaches." I have discovered that two small espressos a day keep me pretty balanced.
Besides, new studies show it actually decreases memory problems as we age. GO, Caffeine! :)
I rarely get headaches, so when I have one, I know its source. It can be due to a lack of water or food sometimes -- at least for me.
Is there a significance for the rabbits jumping over the moon or is it merely a delightful image? In Japan, they see a rabbit on the moon (eating mooncakes or manju) where we see a man. I look for that rabbit now.
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