Thursday, May 1, 2025

Thursday, May 1, 2025

In December 2023, I had my left knee replacement surgery. The pain was unbearable. For a few days post-surgery I experienced a few spurts of awakenings. These pikes of wisdom must have been due to the pain pills and the adjustment my leg was making with its new bionic part. I was in a state of deep consciousness that felt devoid of ego, spacious. And in those awakenings here’s what I realized:

1. That billions of people around the world, similar to the health care workers I was surrounded with, are going about doing what they do each day – toil and struggle to make lives better for their families and themselves. And that majority of people are good.
2. Through media – printed, visual, verbal – we are kept informed about wars, diseases, sickness, terrorism, natural disasters, and other happenings. That is not normal. That is news. We forget that normal is not terrible. Yet we constantly feed ourselves with news about destitution, destruction, deprivation that cause resentment, hatred, and bitterness.

The world is normal. (World does not feel normal any longer. When I wrote this in 2023 it sorts of did.) 

When I returned home from the hospital, a deck of books on the bedside felt like heaven. They were going to transport me to fictional dreams. Their titles, The Dance of the Dissident Daughter by Sue Monk Kidd, Why We Write About Ourselves by Meredith Maran, and Circe by Madeline Miller ushered in a feeling of joy.Three fantastic fictional dreams awaiting me, invited me to dive into their realms. And when I did, my excruciating pain seemed to subside. There were moments when I forgot myself while absorbed in reading. Reading held my hand and helped me get back to my daily routine. It helped me heal faster.