Complaining makes me uncomfortable. Mostly I fear that complaining -- or whining -- will make people suspicious of me, giving them reason to suspect that I'm not toughing-it-out, and that I'm basically a huge prevaricator. But sometimes the old hey-there's-nothing-wrong-with-me-I'm-just-being-'soft' train of thought runs its course right to a dead end. Then you have to grow-up for a minute, breathe in the sweet, cinnamon-esque scent of truth, and come back to your darn senses.
Nevertheless, I think it important that everyone should know when denial is no longer an asset for basic survival, but rather an enemy which really wants us to suffer from parasites or other bacterial infections. You might ask why. Why would denial suddenly disown us and turn so, so harshly? Well, if you mess with the bull, you often get the horns. One indicator that denial is thwarting your daily routine may be that you watch an inspirational movie such as, say, Rocky VI, and you experience such great pause that you decide to get yourself back into shape by doing push-ups and chin-ups, squat thrusts, upside-down-reverse-hanging push-ups, all the while peppering in some yoga to feel in union with not only the fit-hippie, alternative lifestyling hipsters in New York City, but also your brothers and sisters in the yoga-doing parts of the developing world.
Well, I've learned a little something about this two-faced existential element we call "denial". Denial blatantly tells you, "Hey, Guy, do 40 more push-ups and you'll be fantastic!" But denial isn't really in your corner anymore, and your life is not an inspirational montage of exercise-y moments which culminate in the Greek, or, statuesque physique which Sylvester Stallone and I share alike. For me, denial these past 10 days has meant something more along the lines of general fatigue, feverish body, light-headedness, profound increase of appetite, exponential weight-loss, and due to one of two moderately serious health complications, delusions of grandeur with a victorious soundtrack playing in the background of my mind while I wandered the town streets like the welterweight, wold champion I am not (the triumphant music indubitably caused by a mediocre onslaught of hallucinations).
By now your episode of poor health only leaves you the possibilty of utter submission to reality, and reality is your only one true friend now, 100%, absolutely ready at every single bend in the river of life to shake your tree trunk and scream, "get your head out of your...", shouting, "go see a damned medical practitioner, you goon." Reality is the shadowy figure we often leave in the darker corners of the bar because denial is there to buy us another drink as soon as the one we have disappears; reality tends to shake her head and whisper among the shadows of truth and honesty -- her company for the evening -- that you have had enough to drink, or that you probably shouldn't be doing pull-ups and horsing-around with up-downs and new age, user-friendly yoga techniques if you have, o, I don't know, Typhoid Fever and Giardiasis (beaver fever, more commonly).
Reality, you come to understand and comprehend more fully, is your true friend, is the blood sample, the stool sample, and the prescription medicine which your real insurance bought you to make you really healthy for real and for always so that you might one day again board the fitness train whilst not harming yourself in a somewhat vain attempt to be the "people's champion"; the "little-guy's hero"; the "underdog"; the "dragon-slayer"; the "freedom fighter"; the albeit flawed embodiment of the ever popular "I pulled myself up by my bootstraps and stared life in its abysmal face, then roared like Prometheus stealing the fire from Mount Olympus, gifting the greatest plunder to humankind -- even if by condemning myself to a misery none could grasp" epic.
Socrates said that perhaps we think medicine is not good because it causes some degree of pain. Socrates also said that it is true of medicine that we are cured by it, even if initially we detest it for the discomfort to which we are not normally partial. We could very well supplant the word or concept of medicine with anything like it, precisely because it is such a far-reaching metaphor. In fact, let us just assume that medicine is like the truth, or reality. Let us assume that denial seems not to harm us, even though it takes the form of exercise so as to completely distract us from some awful physical symptoms.
The truth, however, wants us to improve in all actuality, not just to have fun until the music stops and the big dance is over. The truth, not only in our favor but entirely pitted against that which wants to burden us with gross unfreedoms, wants us to rest on the couch, drink some gross electrolytes, takes some gross pills, all because it wants us to get back to the yoga, the jumprope, and the chin-ups. The truth, my friends, wants us to slay that dragon, to teach that religion and that English class, but it does not want 75% of our all, of our best; the truth demands 100%, our true, real, and actual potential. The truth needs us, complete and free, ready-to-rumble.
Socrates said that perhaps we think medicine is not good because it causes some degree of pain. Socrates also said that it is true of medicine that we are cured by it, even if initially we detest it for the discomfort to which we are not normally partial. We could very well supplant the word or concept of medicine with anything like it, precisely because it is such a far-reaching metaphor. In fact, let us just assume that medicine is like the truth, or reality. Let us assume that denial seems not to harm us, even though it takes the form of exercise so as to completely distract us from some awful physical symptoms.
The truth, however, wants us to improve in all actuality, not just to have fun until the music stops and the big dance is over. The truth, not only in our favor but entirely pitted against that which wants to burden us with gross unfreedoms, wants us to rest on the couch, drink some gross electrolytes, takes some gross pills, all because it wants us to get back to the yoga, the jumprope, and the chin-ups. The truth, my friends, wants us to slay that dragon, to teach that religion and that English class, but it does not want 75% of our all, of our best; the truth demands 100%, our true, real, and actual potential. The truth needs us, complete and free, ready-to-rumble.
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