These days there is a lot in the news about illness and pandemics. Closer to home, I have been aware of persons who are ill, recovering from operations or close to death.
The news of an illness can surface anxieties, including how we are supposed to respond. These can also touch into an unconscious, deeper anxiety about “ceasing to be,”. Like all emotions, that anxiety can actually be useful and instructive. One of the principles of Mindfulness practice is that negative emotion—when we turn toward it rather than run away from it— is itself the path.
We try and work with noticing the initial apparent unpleasantness of negative emotions. This initial feeling tone is somewhat illusory. The actual “taste” of anxiety is in the just a sensation, like the sourness of a lemon; our initial response tells us that it is bad, but actually it’s just what it is. Like a lemon, anxiety has its uses. These strong emotional states can often be our best teachers.
Mindfulness of illness can teach us so much at a deeper, fundamental level. When illness affects us directly it makes us slow down, and be more attentive to the ongoing wonders that we take for granted. We can see the individual moment of our lives through the perspective of new priorities. We can also be challenged in the way we feel the need to be in control of our lives, to constantly hold ourselves up. Illness helps us see that much of life is out of our hands. Ill people need to let themselves be held by others - by the medical staff, by their families, by the support of friends. At times we too need to receive and learn how to be vulnerable. We learn that not all of life can be measured in achievements and outcomes, but often just waiting in silence can be the best work we can do.
"A waiting person is a patient person. The word “patience” means the willingness to stay where we are and life the situation out to the full in the belief that something hidden there will manifest itself to us. Impatient people are always expecting the real thing to happen somewhere else and therefore want to go elsewhere. The moment is empty. But patient people dare to stay where they are. Patient living means to live actively in the present and wait there".
Henri Nouwen, A Spirituality of Waiting
