Fall is now turning into the more torrential kind of weather that I would expect from perhaps a late November. As I gazed out of the window at my workplace at around 5:15, I saw a very ominous cloud in the distance, foreshadowing hail or perhaps even snow. I managed to get to the meditation practice downtown tonight without too much of either at all. But I also started to feel the familiar tickle in my throat which tells me that I might be getting a virus soon.
It is very typical, I think, for me to think of the body as 'on guard' against attacking invaders. I think that Susan Sontag many years ago came up with the idea that illness is often seen as something foreign, or as something that is simply not natural or meant to be. In her book Illness as Metaphor (1990) she exposed among other things, the kinds of stereotypical thinking that I often engage in when I frame colds and illness: I 'brace myself for the battle' against the virus, or 'take preventative measures' or 'be proactive' by loading myself with hot lemon and cold remedies even before the cold has set in. The point of these metaphors is how it presents the body as a citadel, where I must do everything in my power to protect it from harm. I have often also been presented with the idea that 'fighting a cold' is somehow a sign of inner virtue or strength. An old phys-ed teacher I once had explained that 'toughing it out' is the best way to 'fight' a cold. Here, the understanding is that if I decide not to take any medication at all, my body will somehow immunize itself through the power of the will 'against' the illness itself. It is incredible how many of these metaphors present starkly dualistic attitudes toward illness: it's 'me' vs. 'them', 'health' vs 'illness', 'strength' vs. 'dependency' , and so on. Workplaces in North America follow this pattern by encouraging people with even a slight cough to stay home: "we don't want your cold", and "stay away from us".
But like the weather, colds are also signs that health is a very temporary state of being that is subject to change, sometimes in an instant. The body is not as stable as I conceptualize it to be, and 'health' may not be this robust, steady state of being that I imagine it to be. Many things are happening in the background to maintain this fragile thing called 'health', and much of it isn't in my control at all. I remember reading an old Tibetan Buddhist text, where they talked about how even the tiniest malfunction in the body can lead to a whole cascading effect. For example, some slight malfunction in the kidneys can affect circulation or blood pressure, or the ability for the blood to contain few impurities. None of this is cause for self-blame or disparagement. On the contrary, it would be helpful to stop seeing illness as something abnormal or to be hidden away or suppressed, and to reframe it as one part of a health cycle that ebbs and flows. Illness is sometimes a signal to pursue a new path in life, as it was for Andrew Solomon when he described depression in The Noonday Demon, and when H.G. Wells had suffered a kidney accident after playing a particularly violent game of rugby...which later put him on the path toward writing.
During the group meditation practice discussion period tonight, a practitioner pointed out the metaphor of meditation as seeing things from moment to moment as they are, moving into curiosity about what is happening from one point to the next. I found this insight to be helpful for me, because it points to the way, in meditation, one need not try to conform one's experience to an established norm of 'the way things should be'. Lacking that reference point, one simply uses curiosity to see what's happening in the here and now, even if it's not necessarily what I had wanted or planned. I am not sure if this perspective would help for people who are going through ebbs in their health, but at the very least, it might be helpful to see health as part of a greater cycle that changes continuously.
Sontag, Susan (1978), lllness as Metaphor and AIDS and its Metaphors. New York: Anchor Books
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