As the Rolling Stones so aptly said, “Time is on my side.”
While Mick and the boys weren’t exactly talking about it in the existential sense, the chorus still rings through my head as I contemplate life in June of 2012.
I recently read a blog by a young woman I once knew about her recent battle with Lyme disease.
A spider bite in Europe left her struggling with long-term health issues which, for obvious reasons, she at first found more than a little difficult to adjust to.
Swollen joints, extreme fatigue, neurological impacts and other truly difficult symptoms changed her life after infection to a degree few would find easy to swallow.
But interestingly, she was on a path at the time she was bitten to work towards yogic enlightenment, or something like that, and instead came away with a life-altering infection.
Strangely enough, the infection seemed to achieve what a trip to France for meditation and yoga did not.
A young woman who had been, in her own words, impatient with a “profound, egotistical assuming nature” now found a painful disease to be a teacher of patience and acceptance.
“Life with Lyme disease became a process of patience and compassion.”
This week, as I was running out of time, as I always do, and becoming unsatisfied and impatient with the amount/quality/substance of what I was creating, I found her words strangely calming.
So many of us in North America do not seem to be able to slow down enough to really keep things in perspective at times.
I for one would like to be able to take a page out of her book in the future, and think of running out of time as a chance to focus down and prioritize - without the Lyme disease.