Sick For A Reason

Today is the first day when I feel back to normal, almost. I got a nasty head cold lingering in my system for weeks. It’s been blurry, and the exhaustion is imminent.

During these weeks, I had the energy only to do the bare minimum. Creative thinking wasn’t one of those things. But one thing I could think was how lucky I am not to have Covid but just a head cold.

I felt deep gratitude for the vaccination and all the precautions the government put in place to protect us when the pandemic hit a couple of years ago. More importantly, I felt compassion on a new level.

I felt the many sufferings people experience due to different illnesses and pains they have to deal with. I felt how lucky I was with my leaded head and running nose, my Niagra of the slime. It was nothing compared to the sufferings of so many others.

What is sickness?

How do we deal with it when it suddenly takes us from our daily routines and forces us to stop and leave most of the things we feel we are entitled to have?

SGI President Daisaku Ikeda said it well:

“Health is not simply the absence of illness. Real health is the will to overcome every form of adversity and use even the worst of circumstances as a springboard for new growth and development. Simply put, the essence of health is the constant renewal and rejuvenation of life”.

Will to live to the fullest

To have a healthy life, we must be active, revive, and revitalise every aspect of our being. According to Buddhism, we must take full responsibility and not externalise anything.

We are not victims of the illness. There is always a reason buried deep in our lives, not in any external circumstances. It’s part of the unfathomable cause-and-effect chains we create. Ultimately, we chose to be sick.

Taking full responsibility means we are determined to overcome the disease and use it as a springboard for a more meaningful and profound life, happy life.

It is easier said than done. Happiness comes from winning over ourselves. A healthy life is not an absence of sickness but a way to transform. The only thing that we can change is our attitude.

Victor Frankl, the famous Holocaust survivor and psychologist, said in his book Man’s Search For Meaning: “Those who have a ‘why’ to live, can bear with almost any ‘how’.”

Knowing why we live gives us tools to find how to live it.

The why of life

What is my why, and how did it become clear when nothing was clear but an aching head and sore throat?

As a Buddhist, I don’t have the luxury of dwelling too long in self-pity or having a victim attitude. I had to drag myself by the few remaining hairs from the dark cave of my little uncomfortable cold.

The compassion that I mentioned earlier became my remedy. I could feel how it helped me to recover because I told myself that once the cold was gone, I would be more active in my ways of contributing and creating value for others.

I realised again that my life is connected in myriad ways with everything else. And to help others, I needed first to help myself.

I realised that being at the mercy of the illness was selfish. Blaming cold wasn’t a good cause. I had to be determined to overcome it.

The cold stopped me for a reason. I knew I needed this checkpoint of why I do the things I do every day. What is the value of my actions? I needed to be uncomfortable to find my passion for life again and step outside my comfort zone, which is to take full responsibility for my life and not be just a passive receiver.

During one of his brilliant coaching sessions, Matt Church told us that his granny taught him that there are three kinds of people:

1. Some people make things happen.
2. Some people are those to whom things happen.
3. Some just look when things happen.

In my gloomy mind, I realised that I need to be the person who makes things happen if I truly am a Buddhist.

“Life is never made unbearable by circumstances, but only by lack of meaning and purpose.” ― Victor Frankl.

How about those born with an illness or a genetic disease?

From the deterministic view, it is like destiny. We cannot but feel sorry and try to help and ease the suffering. Buddhism, however, looks at it from a different perspective.

Even if an individual has this unfortunate and sometimes severe condition, it can be a source of change and transformation in the broader view. The karma manifests itself in this form, challenging us to seek a cure, way out, revitalisation and remedy.

I met once a young mother whose son was born with a deadly condition and died a few months after the birth. She was devastated, but in the middle of her sorrow and loss, she told me how much her son gave her strength to appreciate life more and live it to the fullest for her deceased son’s sake. — “My beautiful son came through me to teach me the lesson I needed to learn. I didn’t realise before how valuable life is and how much I took for guaranteed. Losing my son was a sign for me to change — and I think that my son chose to be born like that in his compassion.”

Life is an eternal journey to fulfil our mission

If we think that life is eternal and our life is one with the life of the universe, the comment of the grieving mother makes sense. We are born here to fulfil our mission; for some, it is to show others the path to change, or new attitudes embrace.

We are born with the past karma that gives us this life, its form and the function we possess. It is not a predetermined destiny but a starting point to build this life as a foundation and starting point for our happiness in this lifetime and those existences to come.

It is to help others do the same and become happy and fulfilled as we are and use the circumstances, our shortcomings and even illnesses as the fuel to elevate our life stages towards happiness for all.

That’s what I realised today when my nose was not running anymore, but I could smell the beautiful scents of the grass and winter morning chill again while walking to the cafe to write this blog.