COVID Lessons: Celebrating the Body
It has been quite a while since I have written a blog entry; as some of you may know, I was diagnosed with Covid-based pneumonia about a month ago. Thankfully, I am well on my way to recovery. Healing is a mysterious, non-linear, miraculous and slow process. Baruch rofeh holim – blessed is the Source of healing in this world!
I wanted to share two experiences from my encounter with Covid that I will be thinking about for a long time. The first is an experience of love and how love fosters love. As I started getting sick, I was forced to start canceling my classes and one-on-one sessions. I did so with great reluctance. I feel real responsibility for the commitment I make towards the people I work with. I wanted to work! Small unhelpful voices whispered in my head, worrying that my students might think I was slacking off. They dragged up the questions: If I am not working, then what good am I? If my body is not serving my desires, then what good is it?
But the reaction from my students and colleagues was overwhelmingly compassionate and loving. People sent emails and get well cards, brought over soup and sent entire meals. “Of course you should cancel,” they said over and over again. “Take care of yourself. We will wait for you as long as it takes. Don’t push. Be gentle with yourself.” They told me they were praying for my recovery.
That outpouring of love filled me right up. I felt blessed and satisfied. And that helped me shift my perspective towards my body. I understood in a deeper way that the body is not in fact here to help me actualize the things I want to do. Instead, the body is a source of information. If I listen closely and lovingly, I can understand better the truth of what is going on right now. Today I have energy. Yesterday I did not. I might need to rest later on. I need that information in order to heal.
And listening to the wisdom of the body helped me open to the second Covid experience which was one of yirah, of seeing the proper place of humanity in the world. I was in the ER. It was late at night and I had been there for hours and hours, waiting for tests and doctors. I was alone and had not brought anything with me to read. So I just waited. I breathed. I followed my breath.
Suddenly I had a real sense of the aliveness that is in my body, flowing and sparkling. I could sense it all over the ER, in the nurses who were entering data in the computer, the orderlies pushing the hospital beds around, the other patients, seen and unseen, who were resting and waiting, just like me. The aliveness was everywhere. I also sensed how we all have preferences and opinions about what was happening to us: We want the pain to stop. We want good news. We want to go home healthy. But the truth is that those preferences are really not very important. We are all so small and inconsequential. And yet, we house that flowing aliveness for as long as we are alive. Now that is a miracle. And it was a great comfort.
It will take a while to regain my full strength. But I am taking the love I have received and celebrating this being alive. I am truly grateful.