Dirtbound

A friend of mine in New York City (quite literally a world-class author, I recommend his work highly) is a student of a particularly "hard" style of tai chi. He was going through a rough period, and wondering if he should just pack it in, when one of his fellow students, a diabetic fireman, asked him bluntly:

"You just gonna give up?"

When a diabetic New York City fireman asks whether you are going to "just give up"... there's just no way to say "yes."

My friend shared this story with me years ago, and it has kept me going through all sorts of dark times... but right now, I'm wondering whether I have, in fact, given up.

I have nothing even remotely resembling "gumption;"if you ask me any question that includes the four words "what do you want," I can't answer them except at best in the broadest, most general terms; I don't have either the energy or the interest to do anything that would make me feel more energetic (a problem I've had for years before the MS diagnosis); and I'd be hard pressed even to tell you what would make me feel "better." Or even "good," for that matter.

The energetic treatments that for years have been able to pull me out of whatever funk I was in (acupuncture, qi gong) make me feel better for oh, a few hours at most. I went to yoga the other day, felt great afterwards for an hour or two.

I'm not feeling sorry for myself in the least. I'm just floating face down in a pile of dirt at the bottom of a hole. I'm not what I'd call "depressed." I've been "depressed," I know all too well what that feels like. I really don't think I'm depressed. I'm just... dirtbound. And the random perpetual "sort of" dizziness/fatigue/etc. that has been plaguing me for more than the past month is not helping. At all.

"Well," the voice says, "If you don't like the dirt, dig yourself out."

If I had the energy to dig myself out, I'd have done it already. I mean... duh.

I don't have the energy to get up enough "want" to start digging myself out, much less to do the digging.

"Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind." So the Good Book says. And it's at the "renewing of my mind" point that I'm really blocked.

Now... how to unstick that? It's easy, just takes work.

Oh yeah. Work. As we remember from our high-school physics, work requires energy.

Requires energy. Great.