Appreciate Being Sick

It is one of those days outside. One of those you've been dreading for the last few weeks, or months even. A slight breeze fills your lungs as they are struggling to get enough air through your clogged up nostrils. You hear birds chirping faintly through the buzzing of your tinnitus-ridden ears. The sun is piercing through your tired eyes and hitting you with stinging pain delivered directly to your aching head, photon by photon. You are sick. Everything about this is enjoyable.

Yes, you read that right, being sick with a minor annoyance such as the common cold is a blissful state, at least that's what you should see it as. Just like every child has a right to boredom every adult has the right to being sick and experiencing this uncomfortableness fully, and the two are going hand in disinfected hand. (This is not to say, however, that there aren't better and worse times for being sick, especially when you have responsibilities you cannot let rest.)

So, go ahead, lie in your bed, read your book, capture some thoughts, nap that nap,  listen to some music, or do that nothing. For one, your body is telling you to do exactly that: nothing. Whatever you've been up to until now probably has been a bit too much, be that work, fitness, or obsessing about something mentally. So now, by making your every move hurt, you're telling yourself that all that expended energy is quite a bit too much and definitely better used elsewhere, namely in defending whatever the source of your current malady is.

However, bearing the pain may not be the worst part of being slightly sick, as that can and will quite hastily be treated by ingesting some pain killers. Being able to sit with just your thoughts and the feeling of boredom sinking in is what many of us probably will be having a hard time with. Back to my mother's quote, this is something we have to endure over and over to train it just like a muscle.

So, appreciate it, not just when you're sick, but especially when you're not. It might make the transition to actually being sick less bothersome.