I Am Not This Body
Leave it to a ten year old girl to walk up to me and say, “What’s the matter with your eye? It keeps closing when you talk.”
I tell her that certain words and actions make one of my eyes close.
“Why?”
“I have a thing, it’s called synkinesis, and my face doesn’t work right.”
“Why?”
“I have another thing; it’s called Bell’s palsy. It made my face stop working.”
“Why?”
Go away kid you’re bothering me…
And yet, she didn’t bother me all that much. It has been almost two and a half years that my face hasn’t worked the way it did for the first 47 years of my life.
And yet… I have never been happier.
Have I mentioned that I also have a large lump on my upper back called a lipoma? This is a benign fatty tumor that grew on my back about ten years ago and though it has stopped growing it is very much there. I don’t notice it all that much but it affects my work when I am trying to show people what good posture is, yet there is an unexplained hump in the way. Also, my shirts never fit quite right. Such a life.
And yet… I have never been happier. I am celebrating my ninth wedding anniversary this week and I have two amazing kids, even though one woke up whining and is driving me a little crazy as I write this. Life couldn’t be better and the fact that I have become somewhat physically deformed had little to no effect on how I feel. Fascinating.
Growing up I never had any money and any money I had I spent. We weren’t poor by any means but everything is relative to a child. I always thought, if only I had more, all the things I could do etc, etc…
Well about fifteen years ago I started making a lot of money. I had more than I ever imagined I would have and I lived like it. Lots of vacations, expensive dinners, buying any adult toy I could imagine, and I imagined quite a few. This lasted about six years and then I had nothing again. And guess what, I am happier with less. Infinitely happier. It isn’t that I don’t want money it is just that I was able to learn a very valuable lesson by having it for a while and then not having it.
Most people never get that opportunity. They go through life thinking,” if only”, but never get the chance to witness the illusion of happiness that money provides.
What I learned from all of this is that happiness comes from within or not at all.