100 Days of Pain: What it’s taught me [Part I]

I’m sit­ting in my camp­ing chair on the lawn at Stern Grove pavil­ion as I write this, lis­ten­ing to the San Fran­cisco Opera orches­tra play the sweep­ing melody from Puccini’s glo­ri­ous Tosca. The emotionally-laden music is a fit­ting back­drop for my reflec­tions over the past 100 days. A 100 days of which I’ve been in pain every sin­gle day. While I do feel sad, frus­trated, and remorse­ful, the emo­tions aren’t all somber. I also feel a renewed sense of hope (and not just for free­dom from pain’s grip). You see, I have redis­cov­ered the life within me. It’s the last thing I thought I’d get from pain and tragedy, but I wel­come it with open arms none the less.

Through these painful expe­ri­ences I have grown to real­ize that some­times you have to go back­wards before you can move for­wards. With the amount of pain I’ve been suf­fer­ing from – and the sub­se­quent hours of nec­es­sary bed rest – comes plenty of time for reflec­tion. As I lay in my bed (hav­ing already exhausted the BBC come­dies on Net­flix) I began to remem­ber the things I’m pas­sion­ate about. Activ­i­ties like back­pack­ing, moun­taineer­ing, trail run­ning, pho­tog­ra­phy, and writ­ing. These were the things that had filled my soul with joy for many years. But all of a sud­den, I stopped doing them. How could I have let this hap­pen? How could I neglect and even for­get the very things I loved so much?

As I look back over the years I real­ize that with my two lovely daugh­ters had also come a large sense of respon­si­bil­ity. Upon the birth of my first daugh­ter it hit me: I was now the bread­win­ner for my wife and a brand new liv­ing crea­ture. With the best intent pos­si­ble, I did what I felt I had to – I knuck­led down and focused all of my energy on earn­ing a liv­ing. Doing many of the things that gave me inner delight and energy became sec­ondary to this pri­mary goal. And we all know what hap­pens when we’re busy with work and fam­ily. You end up “never” hav­ing the time or energy for any­thing else.

When most of us get busy, we tend to push things that pro­vide us with plea­sure to the back­ground, assum­ing that they are friv­o­lous. After all, if something’s that much fun, it mustn’t be nec­es­sary, right? I see now how mis­lead­ing of an assump­tion this is. In fact, the oppo­site is true. If we don’t include activ­i­ties that bring us energy, it can be to the detri­ment of the very things we are try­ing to deliver, such as a steady wage and able body.

When we feel the need to earn more, do more, and be more for peo­ple, we tend to for­get about our own needs. Yet if we aren’t tak­ing care of our­selves, we aren’t able to prop­erly take care of those around us. The inabil­ity to real­ize this until we have fully depleted all of our inner resources could be due to the Puri­tan work ethic that soci­ety has instilled in many of us. For me and a num­ber of oth­ers, we grew up think­ing that we’re being self­ish if we put our needs before those of oth­ers, espe­cially fam­ily. How does the say­ing go? Oh, yeah: It’s bet­ter to give than to receive. How­ever, if we don’t take care of our­selves, we won’t have any­thing to give to others.

As I look back, I see a lot of irony in my plight. While I was trav­el­ing all over the world, focus­ing on earn­ing a liv­ing for my fam­ily, the answer to my grow­ing health prob­lems was right before me. What do the flight atten­dants remind pas­sen­gers over the inter­com on every flight? “Place your own mask on you before assist­ing chil­dren.” It’s the same in life. In order for us to be able to pro­vide for those around us, we need to attend to our own well being first.  Some­times it takes some­thing as extreme as 100 days of pain for us to real­ize just how impor­tant a mes­sage this is.

What do you think?

• What do you do to make sure you take care of your­self, even while super busy with work and family?
• What tips or tricks have you learned that help you fit in a work­out, run, or other ful­fill­ing activity?