I Know That I Don't Know

I've been frustrated lately.

Why? Or why now especially? I'm in the fulcrum created by all the various problems I've had over the past months--April surgery, graft wound, pneumonia--none of which show signs of resolving into a final status. My wound was rapidly healing and then--boom--an infection. I was starting to think I could overcome the surgery's slap and--bam--pneumonia.

I have to face the possibility that I have some blame in the great scheme of these problems, that I wasn't careful enough, sanitary enough, isolated enough, to avoid the damages of infections, setbacks that I still think of as minor that are not, as I truly am now.  I'm concerned that a part of my brain still operates as if I'm b.c. ( before cancer) when an infection could be neosporined away. I know it does process like that in parts, that I still think I'm invincible.

It is fading though. I am coming to grips with the damaged lung and the heavily circumscribed list of activities I can logically accomplish--there aren't many and they are not impressive. I am disabled. This is a hard thing to say to myself. I cannot do a lot of things on my own anymore. I need help. I am significantly weaker. Sometimes I can't open medicine bottles, other childproof caps.  I cannot open boxes without scissors or a knife. I have to sit to examine, sit to contemplate, I can't mill about as I used to, hyper, the type who'd shake his leg as he sat.

I'm trying to change my perception without saying I surrender. Im sending healing thoughts to my lung, that I might recover function in a near-miraculous feat of will. I don't expect it but I will try. I am trying to examine the components of a task, to find the best way to accomplish the whole by finessing the components, Taylorism with truly good intent. Each step maximized to accommodate, leading to completion.

I don't know how to give up, but I know that sometimes I want to do just that. I simply can't though, it doesn't suit me to accept when I think I can improve.

I will continue to contemplate whether that's a good or bad situation. I think we mistakenly laud bullheaded, stubborn behavior, and that behavior is not always helpful. Sometimes it is more helpful to accept limits graciously and operate within them to one's best advantage. To prevent injury, further illness, more infection, by recognizing that what was is indeed in the past.

I am conditioned to think that moving forward in time is improvement in the self: more knowledge, more awareness, better health, bigger muscles--to see tomorrow always as an act of eclipsing today. Such a viewpoint, even to the healthiest person, is unworkable. We all will eventually fail that formula, whether on a temporary or permanent basis up to the point at which we die.

In "Roman Fountain", Louise Bogan said: "Still, it is good to try/to beat out the image whole...". That line stuck with me, ingrained itself into a sympathetic mind. I want so much to still beat the image out  like that, but I must be reasonable in how that occurs. Not with a hammer and bicep, but with a mind that practices the exegesis of everything passing in front of it, a gentle unfolding to the core, a mindful, practiced learning process, a commitment to learning all of the landscape it passes through.