You're sick? You're brave.
if things were always great, we wouldn't grow
Have you ever considered yourself brave for getting sick? It may seem odd, but when pain surfaces — in our own body or in Mother Earth’s body — we can choose to see it as a teacher. We can get curious about it and see what it came here to teach us.
That takes courage.
Our common reaction to pain is to try and get rid of it. What if we first chose to see it as a gift instead?
How? By looking through the eyes of Love, the only thing that can heal it.
Each and every one of us appears to be a separate entity, a soul housed in a body, and this is how most of us experience ourselves. We are individual parts of a bigger system called humanity.
Each of us is a part that is always affecting the entire system, with every single thought and feeling we have.
Knowing this motivates me to do better — because I know that when I make a more loving or brave choice, it benefits everyone and everything in existence.
Here’s an example of how this showed up for me last week. My daughter had a cold and stayed home from school. At first, I felt concerned that I might get sick, too.
As soon as I noticed I was feeling fear, I reminded myself that I can choose to greet the fear with Love and curiosity.
Through fear, I could demonize the cold germs and be afraid of them, choosing a posture of resistance. But here’s the catch: What we resist persists.
Instead, I chose Love.
I chose to see the cold virus as a gift — a messenger that came to strengthen my immune system and inspire me to eat better foods. I told my daughter she was brave and encouraged her to meet her cold with curiosity, to eat well, rest and stay hydrated. I dosed up on Vitamin C, Zinc and other immune support supplements. And I listened to my body, asking what it needed from me, trusting in its ability to heal.
By bravely choosing Love over fear, I knew this wasn’t just benefiting me and my daughter. This was benefiting all of us.
When we choose to see through the eyes of Love, we support ourselves and the evolution of humanity.
When we get stuck in a place of fear, we do not.
Just look at the state of the world today. Through most people’s eyes, the pain we are facing is someone else’s fault. Blame the president or people who voted for him. Blame environmental polluters or billionaires. Making honest observations about unloving behaviors is healthy; staying in a place of blame is not. Panic and anxiety are understandable, yet there is a doorway we can enter if we want to embody wellness and bring more wellness into the world.
When we focus our attention on blaming, we are simply adding pain to pain.
If you want to create a world based more in Love than fear, ‘be the change’ you wish to see in the world.
When you choose to meet sickness and fear through the eyes of the Love you are, you create a more loving world.
Maybe you know a child whose courage you’d like to support. Or maybe your inner child could use a boost. In a world that often sees a “glass half empty” perspective on sickness, you can help the child see a “glass half full.” Here’s a video I recorded while hiking last week, that inspired today’s post. It’s for a little boy who had a really tough encounter with poison oak. When I recorded it, my body was mingling with the cold virus my daughter had, and somehow I felt like loving this little boy — by acknowledging his courage — was medicine for both of us.