Joy is.......Getting Sick (?!)

Yes, I know; it sounds crazy. How in the world can you derive any form of joy from being sick? These past few days I have been ill. By far not the most incapacitated I've ever been, but I still felt like sh*t. There are very few things that make you more tired than hours of uncontrollable coughing. Feeling tired all the time is not something I enjoy, I got enough of that working 12 hour overnight shifts at the hospital. Losing my voice for a day or two didn't help either. Now it sounds still quite a bit deeper but at least I can talk again. Life proved much more difficult without a voice to communicate with others around me. People are off in their own worlds most of the time, absorbed in conversation or thought. The iphone headphone's are the must have accessory today, practically essential to life. We trap ourselves in our own little bubble so often and regularly that we don't even see it anymore. Don't get me wrong - I love music and without my iPhone and music I wouldn't know how to live anymore, but after years of always wanting to tune everyone out I realized that it was more detrimental to keep yourself alone rather than join the world around you. There are times that we all need to escape and those times are fine. Jamming out to a favorite song always helps you feel better. I used to walk around target and wal mart with my headphones in when I would go alone. It's fun yes, but after a while they outlive their purpose by disconnecting us from the world around us and creating an escape so real that it soon begins to feel so. Whether it's being able to ask an attendant a question or saying thank you to the guy who just held the door for you, speaking to others and interacting with the world and other people around us is what gives us joy and meaning in our lives. Try it, you just "feel" more a part of the real world when you come back down to earth out of the clouds. So, have fun and jam out whenever you need but remember to keep that balanced with the time you spend interacting with the world around you. Joy comes from other people, whether it's helping someone at the store or holding a door open for someone being able to communicate effectively and appropriately is a simple solution leading to greater rewards. 

Sorry, that was a random tangent, though appropriate none the less. Being sick sucks. Whether it's being in the hospital after surgery or recovering at home, getting the flu or getting pneumonia, no one likes to be sick. It is when we are at our most vulnerable point. We depend on others, if we have them, to care for us when we don't have the energy to keep going. I remember living alone in my apartment one time after surgery and having to take care of myself. I hardly ate anything because I couldn't cook, I didn't even have energy to watch tv in bed and taking a much needed and desired shower took hours of talking myself up to just get it done. My point is, we all need help. These past few days as my partner has taken care of me and gone out of his way to make sure I had everything I wanted and everything else I didn't it has felt amazing. It almost makes the discomfort and pain worth it. At least it gives me a good distraction from the physical pain that I feel. I had an odd sense of joy and wonder and in the end humility as well the past couple of days. I am so lucky to have someone who cares for me this much. He is more valuable than I will ever comprehend. The joy radiating from the inside made the outside a little more bearable. It's finding the happy things in even bad situations. Like I said before, bad things are always going to happen. Eventually we will all get sick at one point. Keeping your eyes, mind and heart open to the positive things will keep you going. If you wait until the bad stops to start seeing the good in life then you are already too late because there will never be a moment in your life when everything is perfect. There's always going to be hardships and tribulation, we just have to handle it with grace. 

While being sick itself sucks and I wish I was already completely better, wallowing in my misery I focused on the things that bring me joy and everything else washed away. Yes I am still coughing so hard that at times I feel like I'll never breathe again, but it's much easier to get through being ill keeping in mind the thought of my loving partner and the care and support I don't deserve from him. His compassion brought me joy. His love brought me joy. But that joy had to be let in, let in consciously and knowingly. Joy is an active verb, you get exactly what you put in. We live once and people so often complain about how unhappy they are - they will always be unhappy until they figure out what it means to have joy.