Since encountering illness in my late twenties I have taken a somewhat different viewpoint on life than I had previously. Although the tumour that I had then turned out to be benign it was a long time before that was understood and the treatment had major physical risks.
It was that journey that guided me into a more philosophical and spiritual outlook on life and it hasn't ever left me. For a while the spiritual took over and thinks got a little crazy, but then I found the balance between the everyday normality and just having a slightly different take on things to the ordinary Joe Bloggs. As I have mentioned before on the blog, over the years I seem to have grown a natural and organic ability to utilise, adapt and develop different philosophies as well as creating my own. It's like having a little extra tool box that I can pick up and put down whenever I want to.
All that isn't going to make me better, but it makes me continue to enjoying learning through the process and feel that I am still getting much out of life. It is somewhat of a paradox that as you decline physically you have the opportunity to grow spiritually.
It is quite funny how drastic news like the news I received last week can impact on your everyday thinking. There is a whole sense of rearrangement of priorities and the perception of events around you. What it does, and indeed what the whole process of illness does, is reduce your viewpoint to the basics and what your intrinstic values are. It becomes quite funny just watching the television and seeing lifestyle focused products being relentlessly pushed at you as if they are important and yet most of us, including me, are sucked in by the illusion.
From a perspective of the self it is now my roots and essence that are important to me. It is not that I need to have a journey of reconcilation, rather it is a change of focus onto what hides behind the facade of everyday life with which we engage.
So, what did I do today? I took a trip to the shops. Irony is great, isn't it?
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