Tires...

My friend had a blow out yesterday and that totally rerouted her afternoon. Tires are something I don’t really ever think about, until there is something wrong with them.  They are such an important part of travel, movement, safety...and yet, I neglect them, and pay absolutely no attention to them when literally every time I get in the car, my life depends on their relative health and longevity.

As I was pondering this thought this morning, it occurred to me that I also tend to neglect other foundational areas of my life...

Health

Nutrition

Exercise

Rest

Pain management

I am the best I have ever been at taking care of all of the above, but habitually, these are the things I have ignored, taken for granted and had a sense of entitlement about.  Foundational living, without which, my life would not move forward, or would progress but in a very different fashion.

It is interesting to me that we humans neglect the things that provide us with the most stable and vital basis for our lives, and instead, place a great dal of energy and focus on things that drain of us of our own vitality:

Work

Stress

Poor diet

Little to no rest

Pursuit of money and possessions

Disconnection and disinterest

Antisocial media that breeds disharmonic living more than anything else I know of today

Health are the tires of our lives, and we neglect it, take it for granted and assume we are good to go, when in reality, we are only good to go so long as our living “tires” hold out.

Since I have been out on disability I have had the gift of reorienting my life with a focus on health.  My days are consumed with getting enough sleep, healthier eating, very little stress, exercise (what I can do at this point) and meditation.  I feel the most balanced and healthy I have ever been while I attempt to heal that which ails me on the daily.

It is hard to heal that which appears permanent and intractable. I have no idea what caused my neck pain, I just know it is present and unremitting.  It hurts all the time, but there are very specific tasks which will increase the pain tenfold:  desk work and stress being the front runners.  So I am doing my best to avoid both stress and desk work.  The later is fairly easy because I am not working so no real reason to be at my desk for hours at a time.  And the not working also helps a great deal with stress management.

I don’t know if my neck pain will ever subside to a manageable level.  I don’t know if I will ever get back to a daily living regime that is pain free.  My life, right now, is all about the mitigation of the pain.  What can I do to strengthen my body so that the pain is lessened.  And what can I avoid that which aggravates the pain...

We are such a weird breed, we humans, we get so hyper focused on things that do not matter all that much and completely ignore things that our lives are riding on...the tire metaphor works for me in this regard, reminding me as I am accelerating through my life at top speed, that my safety and presence in this life is built and maintained on fundamentals, like tires; I can only be as healthy and good as the maintenance of my body, mind and spirit.  This isn’t new, I just have the time now to pay attention to it.  And that is because of all those years I ignored the pain or the subtle life warning signs that without my health, it really doesn’t matter what else I have in this world.  Without health as the foundation for my life, my life cannot or will not ever be what I wish it to be.

Health is the tire of my living vehicle. Perhaps, just maybe, I should attend to it just a little better today? I mean, tires are literally where the rubber meets the road...

Again, still...