On Healing

If I have learnt one thing last year, it is that treating is not the same as healing. The experience of treatment is comfort; the experience of healing is rejuvenation. The danger of pain is that it redefines one's reality - one's expectations of what one considers to be acceptable. In that altered state, one loses the power of rebellious imagination; one stops being able to grasp what it would be like to be free, to be wild. If I may liken life to a disease we are continuously struggling with, the problem with being alive, arguably in any age, is that we give in to this pain. We stop imagining what it is like to be bubbling with life. We refuse to imagine healing, and come to terms with simply receiving treatment. This is not okay. This is not acceptable. The day we decide it is okay to settle into little worlds we build for ourselves in little holes in the ground - that is the day we transition from the miracle of being alive, into the quiet process of dying. Death is not a single event. And we need to stay alert, that it does not slip into our beds on days we get worn down.