Wednesday, July 24, 2013

What it means to have a priority.

What would you be willing to do to truly make something a priority in your life?

How many hours a day would you invest?   

Would you be willing to do things other people didn't agree with?  That people around you thought were weird or crazy or wasteful?  

And money....how much would you be willing to pay if that's what it took?

Thirty dollars?  
A hundred?  
Ten thousand?  

What if it required sacrificing other things you like or value for a short while - or even a long while?  

Like this blog.  No, I haven't posted in 3 months.  Yes, I still write in my head every day anyway.  

But when it gets down to it, I have a singular focus.  And that is: getting better.  Healing.

Sometimes that means choosing 8 hours of sleep a night over staying up till 2 AM writing a post (as seems to be my pattern).

Are the two - healing and blogging - mutually exclusive?  No.  In many ways, this blog HAS been my source of healing.  I vomit out things onto this page that I can't let out anywhere else in my life, and that's been huge.  

But when yet another injury struck me this winter, it cemented for me that I cannot go on like this.  Weeks of suffering turned into months, then years (now almost SIX) of endless pain.  

If I don't have my physical health, nothing else matters.  That's the bottom line.  

Because If I don't fix this now, when will I?  

How many more years will I be able to go on like this?  

How many more re-injuries will thrust me back into hopelessness and helplessness?  

We all hear people claiming to have priorities all the time.  But they don't need to say a word.  All we have to do is look at how they spend their time, who they spend it with, and where their money goes.  Usually it will be in direct contradiction to what comes out of their mouths.  

So I guess what all this means is that, for now, my priority is me. Nobody else is going to take care of me, or make me better, or do the work for me.  "No one is coming" to save me, as Nathaniel Branden might say...

Whatever alternative treatments I have to try, whatever amount I have to pay for physical therapy, however long I have to spend with laborious daily exercises that I would trade a 20-mile bikeride for any day, my decision has been made.

It's time.  In fact, it's long past time.  

"Change happens when the pain of staying the same is greater than the pain of change."
-Tony Robbins