To Be or Not To Be

A little kingdom I possess,
Where thoughts and feelings dwell;
And very hard the task I find
Of governing it well.
~ Louisa May Alcott

...that more or less describes my situation!

~A Wise Man Said~

It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.
~ Aristotle
Monday, March 02, 2020
 
I think you might have noticed that I blog more from my head than my heart these days but that may be because I was pretty much living in my head for the past one month. Just finished with a rather tough deadline and feel slightly relaxed at the moment.

You, my readers, know very well that I tend to hit the panic button quickly when it comes to health and sickness. But it doesn’t seem like an avoidable topic at all these days. The moment I wake up and check my phone I get to know that more people are infected, when I browse my social media feed all I can read is how surgical masks are not helping, how one must wash hands to be on the safe side, how people are hoarding up on food to prepare for the days ahead, how it’s spreading everywhere and people are dying… I try to not let the anxiety and panic get to me but I have to admit I am finding it hard. I believe I have said before how I tend to develop the worst fears when it comes to health and when anything is in the air it doesn’t take me long to convince myself I have developed it… well, in this scenario it’s perhaps the worst tendency to have! :( I was shopping the other day and a lady wouldn’t stop coughing…I started sensing my own panic…what if? Weird, I know, but that’s what I am talking about… I’m just the worst person in this sort of situation…my own worst enemy. I caught myself thinking while washing the dishes today that at worst I will die and at best nothing will happen…win-win :| I mean, you don’t suffer your own death right, other people do, so in that sense it can’t be so bad. Except that I wouldn’t want to die with my family away from me but in this scenario it would seem best if they were away…well, if you were wondering if I ever let logic desert me then you know now ;)
As if all this wasn’t bad enough, I am grappling with another—I hate to call it a health issue given I just talked about the life and death scale of it—but I am grappling with acne. I realised that this was an issue on top of my mind but I have never mentioned it on my blog because it sounds like one of those trivial superficial vain things… but then I think that if that’s what it is, it is still me… I have had run-ins with acne all my life, not the severe kind but the now there, now gone ones…which is why perhaps it’s never really taken any major headspace before this…now though, it’s different. It almost feels like an attack of the mosquitoes or houseflies, you see one, spray it, you see another, you spray it, you see more, you keep spraying, but suddenly they are everywhere… you feel powerless… and to make matters worse you don’t carry your house around with you but you do carry your face! I have been feeling a little lost about how to tackle this as all the novice type things I have done don’t seem to be working… I keep telling myself that if I stop thinking about it, it will go away… see, there’s more logic for you ;)
The fact is that the really serious health threat is making me look at my small issue in some perspective…it isn’t small because it is affecting my mood and my mental well-being but when I think about the bigger issue it makes me think that I should be grateful that that’s all I have to worry about… I don’t know if it’s illogical but I am actually wondering if sometimes thinking too much about something just makes the thing far worse than what it is… anxiety and stress are known to lead to health issues… I used to suffer from very bad colds during exams as a kid …a tuition teacher once pointed this out to me but as a kid I never made the connection of course of why that might be… in that sense it doesn’t seem very far-fetched to think that maybe my anxieties and stress related to the bigger health threat, related to the future…and a lot of global stuff over which I have no control… is causing my skin to break out. Not thinking much about things might just be the best I can do for my own physical and mental health…though easier said than done… or think about it but not let my thoughts run away with me... maybe it is best to draw on hope…to believe that all will be well… that nothing lasts forever and this situation also won’t…till then, maybe, just maybe, try not to dwell… that’s what I am telling myself, dear readers… and that’s what I want to tell you… keep calm and stay well…

posted by Sylvia D'souza at 6:15 am 0 comments
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