…But only if you manage to overcome the limiting programs you have built into the “system”. Now I would like to talk about one of these programs: you have to be non-stop efficient, move fast to please others, not miss opportunities, not be lazy, be perfect. But what do you know? An autoimmune disease slows you down, not just through pain, but also through fatigue. I feel the need to rest more than the rest of normal, healthy people. For a long time I felt guilty for this, I pushed myself, sometimes to the point of exhaustion, so that I could also be like “the rest of the world”. It seemed to me that others were looking at me reproachfully because I couldn’t complete my tasks quickly, because I was moving too slowly, and it probably wasn’t just seems like it, it really was. And the more I tried to move faster, stay alert longer, the more energy I expended the more inefficient I became. Fear and guilt are the biggest energy spenders, and to an autoimmune the energy is also on the sponges. What is the flip side of fear and guilt? Acceptance. Acceptance of the actual situation and the awareness that this is the way things are and not otherwise and that I have to arrange my life as I know is good for me, not as it is printed in my “program” or that of others. Don’t think that it’s easy to overcome a program, that you’re aware of it and that’s it, from tomorrow you’re zen and you manage to not get hurt by the opinion of others or by the guilty voice in your brain. I still struggle with this, I still feel obliged to explain to others that I was born tired and that I was probably a koala in another life. Now I can at least joke about my tiredness, and that’s a good sign of acceptance.
Speed and physical endurance are not my most valued assets, but I realize that I can be valued for other qualities. I had no idea how much you can discover when you choose to take a break, not just when you’re dead beat tired, when you stop to smell the roses without feeling guilty, when you watch a sunset without paying attention to the noise around you or the one in your head. When you just stop for no reason because you feel like it. When you make fun of yourself that you hit a ray of sunshine and go drowsy like a lizard. Where is the wisdom in all that I have endeared to you here? In acceptance. Accepting does not mean capitulating to the illness, to others, to the times… Acceptance is adaptation to the state of affairs, it is not giving up the fight, it is the understanding that there is no need to be a fight. That you don’t need to bother because you want everything to be like you want. To stop obsessioning and look around, so you can see new opportunities.