Sunday, January 13, 2013

Realizations; and, just like life

Two things struck me today.

First off... Clearly, I'm still processing my, well, "processing," I guess. Stuff that I thought I had gotten over, I guess I haven't. "Guess"? Frak no, there's no guessing required. Driving somewhere that's nowhere close to [this particular unnamed for the moment place], but passing a freeway off-ramp that would have taken me there, I was suddenly hit with "They hurt me." I still haven't let go of the place, the people, and the hurt. Well, there's no way to circumvent or accelerate "processing," so that's going to be, alas, on my to-do list... because, after all, until I finish with it, I won't really be able to move forward.

Doesn't have much to do with M.S. (although me having that disease played a part in Issues With The Unnamed Place), but being able to "process" properly will certainly help me dealing with whatever potholes I may encounter, while traveling the Neurological Highway. Or life, for that matter...

And the other thing that struck me today is that everyone... everyone... is going to have to deal with a wheelchair, eventually. Maybe (as happened to me) it's because you yourself are getting stuck in one. Or maybe it's a parent that you'll be pushing around. Or a spouse. Or a child. Everyone is, eventually, going to have to learn how to deal with a wheelchair.

Given that wheelchairs are bound to be a constant in the human experience, why the @#$@$@#$ don't people build everything more wheelchair-friendly? Well, a friend of mine who used to be a professional lobbyist (I dunno for what/who) said that people—everyone, no matter what their job may or may not be—will solve their own problems; or, at best, the problems they're aware of. I understand how this works, it annoys me because jobs I've had, I've had to find problems and solve them before they happen, and if I can do it, so can other people. Or so I assume... OK, let's be even more honest, presume.

So, gotta keep warm, gotta take my herbs, gotta do some "internal house cleaning." Gotta do some forgiving.

As I've said, the M.S. journey is... just like life.

2 comments:

Judy said...

The thing about life is that it's constantly giving us opportunities to process. Having gone (and still going) through an intense whirl in the life processor, I can attest to its being a supreme Pain (add ITA or whatever suits you). And yet. And yet. I still wipe myself off and keep trying. So either I am a fool or made of hardy stuff, maybe both. At the moment, I am rereading Viktor Frankl's Man's Search for Meaning, which is helping some. But even then, I think about the role luck played to some extent in his being able to leave the concentration camp and that his life there had an end, and so he lived to tell the tale so to speak. MS only gets worse and is interminable. But for now, I'll heed his advice and look to strengthening my inner life and sense of pupose. Might as well since I don't have many other weapons in my bag of tricks.

Judy said...

And yet, as VF says, “…it did not really matter what we expected from life, but rather what life expected from us.” That his camp life had an ending perhaps is only indicative of his ability to live to share his wisdom with others and has little to do with the relevance and magnitude of his wisdom.

Perhaps I am entirely off topic here with my references to VF but the confluence of your post and my reading his book have resulted in these mental meanderings for me.