What's This All About Now?

I've been thinking a lot about life lately.  The main foci have been career, peace of mind, art, travel, love and health.  I've always seen my career as the backbone of my life, the steel on which the concrete of my days will depend for support.  Peace of mind has always been the scaffolding of my life.  It's that structure that allows everything else to be built smoothly and to be structurally sound, although it tends to be creaky and downright questionable more often than not.  My art is the door to my breath and the key that releases my spirit into the woods to wear flower garlands and skip through grass as dandelion seeds are plucked from their stems by playful winds.  Travel has always been the decorative colouring in the corners of my mind.  I want to visit all the ruins of ancient civilizations, from Petra to Athens to the Valley of the Kings, and feel what the people must have felt as their skin got burnt by the sun or sand filled  their lungs in those very spots.  Love has always been that elusive, but tyrannical imp that pulls my hair, teases me with ticklish giggles and yanks from my soul less than glamorous outpourings of entirely overblown affection.  Health, though, has never been a serious consideration for me...until recently.

Recently, I began to notice that all the little quirks of my body were becoming imposing oddities.  My cramping knees became too weak for walking, headaches became sledgehammers to coherency, clogged ears and sinuses became inhibited senses and constant ringing.  Suddenly, my little temperamental body would no longer stay silent.  That was when I realized that the structure of my life may have had bones, scaffolding, doors, decoration and sweet pests, but this was the concrete I had so long ignored.

We don't always realize what's brewing beneath the layers that we consider most important.  Then one day we aren't able to walk, think, hear or breathe and it hits us that we've been neglecting these colossal parts of our beings for too long and they've simply degenerated slowly at their own will.  You see, they don't care that we have reports to finish or people to see.  They do what they are wired to do, disregarding you as if you were the speck of dust on the wall that everyone overlooks.  If that wiring is deterioration, then what do you suppose you will ever be able to do about it?

In my case, I've come to realize that my bodily quirks are more than just annoyances, but what's this new eruption of health issues all about?  They could potentially- and already do- get in the way of the life I have planned.  Admittedly, I imagine my future and everything I want to do and, once continued degeneration is factored in, I wonder if these plans and dreams of mine are realistic.  What have I not told anyone? Take your pick.  This isn't the first time that my knees have buckled beneath my weight, my head has struck me motionless for hours on end, my ears randomly pop every now and then and suddenly I realize I was barely hearing the world around me.  No one needs to know that I've taken to grinding my teeth because almost every act is too painful for some part of my body to bear.

Will the pain stop me from hiking up that hill or writing that paper? It may try, but I'll fight it if I have to.  Hey, it's not that bad, right?

...

Lives there who loves his pain? 
Who would not, finding way, break loose from Hell, 
Though thither doomed? Thou wouldst thyself, no doubt,
And boldly venture to whatever place
Farthest from pain, where thou mightst hope to change
Torment with ease, and soonest recompense
Dole with delight...

- John Milton Paradise Lost