2. Let go.

When we are ill, the world quickly collapses on us. We suddenly feel the urgency of all the tasks and duties we cannot accomplish. As Charles de Gaulle commented: “The cemetery is full of people who thought they were indispensable.” It’s important to conserve our energies, to channel them on healing. Be strong enough to delegate. Let others pay the bills or interview the new candidates at work. Think about this: if you were so sick you never recover, someone else would ultimately end up doing the job if it needs to be done. Also let people know that it’s okay to bypass you and bring their problems to someone else other than you. Learn to be grateful when others pitch in and try to carry the ball—even if they fumble more than you might.

3. Focus on your feelings

We’re always trying so hard to appear strong and competent. I call this trying to be “large and in charge.” Well, guess what? When you’re sick, you’re definitely not in charge. Even the most mighty are brought low by illness so we should not be surprised when we’re made so painfully aware of our weaknesses. I remember after one of my own hospitalizations how humiliated I felt when I needed my nurse (and later my own family) to help me on and off the toilet and clean up my accidents. But the embarrassment is all within me; it’s telling me that I have to get beyond my own awkwardness at losing control. We all regress when we are under stress. We become more vulnerable, more needy, and, in many ways, a bit childish. It’s okay. When you’re back on your feet, try to also remember that sense of vulnerability—you’ll be a far more compassionate individual if you do.

4. Pray

I’m not telling you to become religious. Praying is nothing more than focusing on what’s inside of you that needs something outside of you. It can be God. It can be Mother Nature. It can be the miraculous abilities of the your own body. When you take the time to pray, you are helping yourself to become aware. Personal awareness engenders transformation.

5. Manifest yourself

Do whatever will help you recover and forget everything else. You need to concentrate your energies for the fight of your life. You need to bring the best you have if you want to win this one. So bring it. Your life is on the line---act like it.

6. Get out of the hospital

I cannot emphasize this enough: hospitals are dangerous places but especially for people who are sick. You need to see that a hospital concentrates a lot of anguish and suffering under it roof. In that regard, consider how overbearing and de-personalizing hospitals are. Like prisons, hospitals embody command and control. Neither work well as institutions that heal. I believe it’s important to remove yourself as a patient as soon as possible from the negatively charged environment. Furthermore, the longer you stay in a hospital, the better the opportunity for a hospital-acquired infection to find you. The food stinks, there’s no sleep to be had, and someone in the other bed has the TV remote. It’s time to go as soon as you can crawl out of there to save yourself.

7. Change your values

Think of how badly you wanted your last big toy, the last great purchase. Did it really make you feel so great? Now that you’re ill, how important was it really? As a surgeon, I’ve gotten to witness a lot of people die but I have never met one who confessed to me on his deathbed: I wish I had spent more time at work! What do I hear? God, I wished I could have changed my ways. So what are you waiting for? Even if you change now, it will be worthwhile. If you have a chance to discuss life values with cancer survivors, you will see that they have learned to live. They have been through the fire and now have no patience for anything petty, anything that wastes a moment of their precious lives. They learn to simplify. Spiritual awareness brings responsibility—the duty to change.

8. Illness is never a punishment

Far too many people see a disease as some form of cosmic punishment for some past sin. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Illness is nothing more than entropy. It is the second universal law of thermodynamics: “the entropy of the universe increases during any spontaneous process.” In other words, as your consciousness is enfolded into a mortal, physical body, it requires a great deal of organization: atoms into molecules, molecules into DNA, cells into tissues, and organs into communicating body systems. But all of this is subject to breakdown: like any mechanical part, like any natural process. In so many ways, even those illnesses that can be prevented often occur because people did not heed lessons, did not respect the impact of outside forces on the body’s systems. The Universe never punishes, it merely happens. Imagine blaming yourself if an earthquake happens. It just occurs and it engulfs whatever it does. Cracks do not occur in the Earth’s crust so they can propagate and find a particular individual. If a person is hurt or killed, we simply understand it as a natural phenomenon. Illness is a just an isolated natural disaster occurring on an individual basis. Nor is there a vindictive God who brings suffering to His children. He is filled with love and compassion.

9. Live in the moment

Illness teaches us that the future is just an illusion, a mirage. Mortality teaches us to focus on just the present instant that is the only place where any of us can become truly and fully alive.

10. Get in touch with Nature

We are all Nature’s children. She is our mother in the largest sense of the word. We can only appreciate her secrets when we behold the mystery of her beauty. Get yourself outside. Take a breath of fresh air. Watch a bird. Stare at a tree. A flower. A cloud. Let yourself get in touch with the beauty that binds you to the whole Universe. Nature is the great soother and the great teacher.

Back to complete listing of Tracings Articles

.