π΅π πππ ππππππ πππ ππ ππππππ ππ ππππ πππππππ ππ ππππππππ πππππππ πππππππ ππ π πππππππ πππππππππ ππ πππππ πππ ππππ π πππ πππ ππππ - Viktor Frankl
The last couple of days have been a bit of a blur. I've been in bed for a lot of the time with post viral fatigue from the flu that I can't seem to shake. Generally I don't get ill very often and seem to bounce back from the annual cold pretty fast, but perhaps with age and the "10 week bug" that's doing the rounds, it seems my immune system isn't what it once was.
There have been sunny opportunities to get outdoors but I chose not to take them as I just couldn't bring myself to walk more than a hundred metres without breathing hard so I have given myself the grace to be lazy and let my body try to recover. It's translated into a lot more sleep than I usually get, a lot of lounging around in my PJs and many more hours of binge watching stuff that I usually wouldn't.
In a way, it's felt like wasted time, but I don't really want to end up in hospital with pneumonia or something as awful so I figured perhaps I should look at it more as an investment in my overall health and wellbeing than a waste. The cough is lingering which is so horribly annoying, leaves me out of breath and dizzy, but I'm certain that in time it will just be a distant memory and I'll get back to my usual everyday activities with more gusto and oomph.
I took some time out yesterday to go through photos from my last walk and nestled in to the feelings that they brought back. Not all walks have vibrancy to them, but considering I was feeling a lot more able then, it left me feeling like there's something to look forward to once I'm fully back on my feet again.
Do you ever feel that way when you're a bit grey? Like looking forward still has some hope left in it and that there's an opportunity to get there - to work towards it, no matter how long it may take?
Perhaps it's also left me questioning and examining our own fragility. Our bodies wear out, our minds don't remember things as well as they once did, our character might become more set in stone through time with our flexibility perhaps becoming less obtainable. We go through trials, tribulations, existential crises, we have successes, milestones, acknowledgements, gains, losses and all manner of fluctuations in between. Some people struggle to merely exist while others seem able to fully maintain an absolute happy medium.
Some see opportunities, others see only obstacles.
It's always interested me to see how different people view the world from their own sphere of influence and experiences. I often try to put myself in their shoes although that is hardly truly possible in itself as my experience may be entirely different to that particular persons. Similar to the chaos theory, we can only try to predict the possibilities before an event but very rarely do we see the reality exactly as it's playing out in real time.
And hindsight is always 20/20. It's always easier to provide advice if you're on the outside looking in, because then you aren't the one having to maintain and keep track of all the other things happening at once. You are not in the eye of the hurricane so to speak.
These conclusions came after a discussion I had with someone where the person was absolutely incapable of putting themselves in my shoes even for a minute. Sure, they are their own person and while some of our experiences in life have been similar, they are not identical because they affected us in different ways, at different times and we are two completely different people. We live differently, we think differently, we experience the world differently.
The person was very quick to make comparisons to show me up as inefficient and rather pathetic at problem solving and instead told me that I should just compare my situation to someone they know who had got third degree burns in a terrible accident and then I should be able to just sort out my problems because they are miniscule in comparison. They are however, two completely different situations and circumstances - but that is not taken into account at all, only the severity of the issue at hand is. I do have to wonder though if I had to compare the burn victim's situation to, gee, I don't know, Victor Frankl for example, and then tell her that he should just be grateful that he only got burned, would she take offence to it and tell me I'm belittling someone's trauma?
If comparing situations is the best advice for someone to face a harsh reality (or essentially ignore it) and the problems a person faces in life - is that actually going to help a person overcome any of those issues or is it merely going to send a message that their situation or circumstance is irrelevant, should not be acknowledged and they should plaster on a façade of "fake it 'til you make it"?
At what point does that person have to shatter their then created illusion of everything is awesome in order to deal with the underlying issue?
I didn't realise that life and a person's measure of compassion was this much a like a fashion show - only those with the most outrageously elegant and expensive clothes or contrarily - the most tattered, worn through threads were worthy of acknowledgement and everything in between absolutely irrelevant.
π·ππππ ππ π¨π° ππππ. π¨ππ ππππππ πππ πππππππ πππ ππ πππ.