Thorough Care

Many are the times when I have had to take a friend through the motions of self healing. The illness having been caused by they themselves.I have suffered from the same a couple of times, despite knowing the best prevention and cure for it. I am talking about heart illnesses not the physical hole in the heart, or collapsed artery sort of illness. This is that which we bring onto ourselves it is when ones heart suffers from lack of maintenance. How Is this possible ? You ask, most of us spend hours grooming ourselves, going for manicures, pedicures, massages, going to the gym, jogging, eating proper foods , go out to have fun in dance clubs, buy music and video systems for our houses, which ensures we are thoroughly entertained, we date, fall in love, watch our young children grow, we play with our pets, drive cars and mountain bikes, surf the internet, take pictures, watch the sunset and sunrise, buy nice clothes, wash and iron them for good appearance, students take part in exciting drama and music festivals, sports, make fun of their teachers and sneak in food to their dormitories.
Those in jobs do their jobs well, work overtime and do all in their ability to do a satisfying job. Farmers wake up early to plant, and get back home late after a long day’s work , the politicians harangue, the common man complains, the religious follow the set rituals, a day or two a week, the writers scribble and lose themselves in a bubble of fantasy which rises higher and higher until reality pops it and they crush back to earth, musicians give performances, the audience responds with applause, horses and cars race, participants win bets, others lose, clubs are formed, others break.
At the end of the day, what do we say? Life continues. Some say it was good while it lasted, while still a number will say, who cares ? Or what does anything matter ?
What is my point? It all depends on your view of things. The things mentioned above, seem to me like all physical. It may be argued that taking care of the physical means everything else is taken care of , take happiness that results from say winning a game, or dancing, one feels happy, looks happy and the happiness -no doubt is resounding in every corner of the entire composition of a person - but is this the case?
My friend Wangeci, a mother of two has been married for the last four years, and living happily in a big house in an uptown estate, she has everything one would wish for , a loving family, a faithful husband, money to raid all the exhibitions in town, modern home entertainment system, a stress free job, house helps and a healthy body.
Wangeci laughs a lot , she enjoys life, she is what some call the life in and of a party. Everything goes well for her, however; she realizes she constantly has uncertain feelings in herself , she feels unsure and she confesses to experiencing flashes of panic criss crossing through her-that’s the way she explains it- all this while she portrays perfection personified. Why is this so ? First we must understand that this is not her doing at all , while she is all over town, literally doing all the right things and ensuring her life is not going down the slope, her inner self is looking the other way. All she does she does for the sake of keeping up appearances. She may seem happy, yes, but she has not taken time to listen to what her inner self has to say, perhaps according to what society has raised her to believe, she thinks all she has is enough to make her satisfied, it might be the complete opposite of what could make her satisfied, all over. She hasn’t taken time to consider that maybe what she feels is most important to her is actually someone else’s dream, maybe her parents or friends or even her happy lark self which always has it’s own definition of situations.
Many of us never reach our inner selves. We only take one look at things,based on our single view,and other people’s, and think that is truly the way, we never sit to ask ourselves what it is we really need.
Meditation, religion, self search and all those practices that we try out for the purpose of reaching out to our inner self do us no good unless we can take time out of our busy happy schedule and examine our hearts. One way to do that is by writing down those thing that we honestly desire but ignore because they seem dull and less glamorous than the basis for glamour, when we have this on paper, we can think of them and closing off our minds against exterior interference, we think of how we feel about them, this way, we will be guarding ourselves against heartaches and dissatisfaction even if they don’t come to pass, at least our innerself knows we took the time to consider what it had to say.The entire person is taken care of, and chances of uncertain flashes zigzagging across our abdomens become fewer.

{Published in The People On Sunday 2005,as We don’t Really Know What We Require.}