Mending

On witnessing the miracle of my body

I have spent the last few days watching my body stitch a wound back together. I had been foolish – I was exhausted, fogged, and picked up a hot tray fresh out of the oven with my bare hand. I am good at first aid and the damage was minimal, but one patch on the side of my hand was soon covered by a sizable, swollen white blister. Each day since I’ve watched it. Each day since I’ve found my heart full.

Will you know what I mean when I say this next thing? Seeing my own body repair itself has renewed a trust I did not know I was lacking. Seeing my own body repair itself has brought me to tears. That is the truth of it: that this stupid, nothing, minor event has not been nothing at all. It has filled the week with meaning like a song. 

Much of what my body does is usually hidden from me. It has spent my life doing so many confusing and alarming things that I have often lost faith that it knows what it’s doing at all. I have not often felt cared for by my body. I have not often felt safe in its embrace. Watching it speedily and cleverly get to work this week, particularly in such a visible place on my right hand, has shifted something inside me. I have witnessed my body undeniably and skilfully protect me from infection and then slowly arm and busy itself with the job of knitting itself new skin to close the gap. It’s a job it has done a thousand times before in a thousand different ways and most of the time, I’ve ignored its effort entirely. And through all its rallying and mending, a message: “I know what I’m doing and I will do my very best.” This time, I have trusted it. I have been learning what arises when that trust grows.

Watch anything feel safe and you will see delight soon surface: in a child, an animal, in me. I have been like a child, full of questions and interest, and I have googled them with eagerness rather than anxiety (“what is the fluid under a blister called? What does it do?”). I often talk about moments acting like a doorway. To realise that trust is an invitation to delight in things has felt like a significant one.

Seeing and acknowledging that wisdom is present in my body, I have also found I naturally want to offer help. I want to learn what my body needs to do its mind-boggling work. I want to be a part of it, to aid in it, like an apprentice sitting at her teacher’s elbow, watching her craft. I want to pass tools, ask questions, do the work asked of me in return. I don’t want to assume I always know better. I don’t want to give into the ego and impatience of striding in, sighing and poking, I just want to better understand and do everything I can to remove the obstacles to this fascinating event, to rebalance and feed the things that, if out of balance, will interrupt a process as natural as the tides and a tree growing. Here, I will keep this wound clean while you heal. I won’t make things worse. I will celebrate the outcome as the only one possible with the resources on hand. I will learn, slowly, to accept what is not attainable.

I can see how if I don’t listen and and learn how I might make bad, bad choices. I can see how if I was to be impatient, I might ruin the whole thing. There have been moments – rushing and knocking the scab, idly picking at it – where I could easily have undone so much good work. I have seen clearly, perhaps for the first time, the reciprocity of relationship in healing. I have realised how good medicine should mirror this. I have seen that in endlessly blaming my body for its failings, I am often denying my own responsibility – all the little things I could still do to learn and care for it rather than resent it, not from a place of guilt but with all the joy and eagerness of a little child helping to bring the shopping in.

God, there is such pleasure in it. That’s what struck me most of all. This tender, curious, willing, loving role that wants to help, not control, wants to learn rather than demand or take. There can be real joy in accepting everyone’s best and seeing what happens.

It was just a burn, but as with all things it makes me think and think and think. 

What if we could teach the world again how much satisfaction there is in slow caretaking, how much pleasure? We’re all so habitually programmed to see speed and accumulation as the ways to feel good, to feel full. We’re taught that fulfilling our desires is the only way to be happy, no matter how helpful or harmful those desires are. What if we treated nature as one big body, one to learn from, with the wisdom to heal itself; if we busied ourselves removing the things that harm it instead of demanding more and more of it and more and more of each other? What might change? Everything? I wish we could all realise the delight that could arise if we began to respect and learn from this vast body that is our home. I wish I could turn each one of our heads away from accruing and towards tending. I believe this is what humans were meant for. I know I can only start with my own body, my own mind, my own space.

You know this about me by now: I am too earnest about everything. I take everything seriously and see meaning everywhere and god, I am so glad I do. One day, my body’s brave best will not be enough to save my life and I will regret every moment I was unsatisfied with it.

I think that one of the greatest things we can do to guard against despair is to give ourselves permission to find small things meaningful.

Moments like this, it strikes me: if I don’t let this small this teach me – if I don’t find it astonishing – then I am lost. It is astonishing, and to deny it is the symptom of the most dangerous illness I know, one of apathy and cynicism. The opposite of trust. The opposite of love. A different kind of death, long before my time.

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