Sickness and Shifting Gears

When I am sick, it is a time of melancholy but also of philosophising. While my brain seems sluggish, and I cannot focus on my common routine, my mind is so clouded it is hard to work on my papers or latest project. This opens up an opportunity rarely taken in the day-to-day. It becomes a time to think on the nature of death and mortality, ask what is moral and what passes for being moral. It can be a time to critique power and hear how others justify the abuses of state power. Being sick is a good time for all of those wonderful questions.

If you cannot speak, it is a time to listen. Sickness and those days off that sickness brings can give us the time to check up on the news regarding things we actually care about. We can read blogs, listen to clips on our interests and take stock of the new developments in the world that we were so ignorant of while we remained locked within our routine. Sickness can give us the opportunity to become more informed citizens. More than "time off" it can be a time to ourselves, and thus a time to improve what we know.

Of course, distraction is so very good when to swallow is to experience pain. When breathing is hard listening completely to a presentation by specialists can take us temporarily away from the concerns of the body. Comedy sites can give some relief in 2,5 or 20 minute intervals, but the better form of distraction is philosophy and broadening our knowledge of the world and current events.We can focus on such "heady" topics with just a bit of time off. If we cannot speak, we may still be able to type.

We are limited while gripped by sickness, our minds do not function so clearly. Yet, there is still an opportunity to do something, to learn something, and to deviate from our typical schedule. Distracting ourselves from the pain, dizziness or trouble breathing is also no bad thing. That is why I think that in being sick once in a while, we can find ourselves open to asking the big questions, and the questions personally important to us. In being stuck at home and unable to go to work we can shift gears and explore part of what it is to be human, and ask the big questions that we push to the side as we carry out our daily lives with all of their obligations and responsibilities.


P.S: apologies for any errors, I was a bit under the weather when I wrote this.