Those of us in the curing business get uncomfortable around the areas where we are bound to fail. I’m in the business of helping, but while some things might be healed, they cannot be cured.
There is no cure for old age. Or for heartbreak. The tribulations of childhood? No cure for that either. The anxiety that pours out of the empty place in your chest at 2:18 a.m.? There are no pills that will actually fill that void. There is no cure for the way spouses behave — you just have to love them.
No medication slows or halts the maturing of a child into an adult. Will a pharmaceutical prescription lead you to the next stage of development? Or does it only hold something in stasis so you don’t come completely apart the way an acorn disintegrates into roots and a sprout?
How do you recover your ferocity and heal after having swallowed the lie that being nice ensures that people will give you what you want? Is there a treatment that will transform your parent into the one you’d wanted? Is there a diet that boosts your self-esteem so you can rest comfortably with your contradictions, and be on friendly terms with the parts of yourself you like the least?
What if your headaches are actually loyal friends that will not leave until you take needed downtime, or give up the “food product” that is more chemistry than nutrition? What if anxiety is a reminder that everyone feels alone? What if your waking at night means you’ve been asleep to yourself during the day? If your troubled digestion is about what you refuse to stomach? If the breaking down of the bones in your body is a reminder of the relentless passage of time, and that it’s best to do what we can with each moment?
How do we navigate changes that are so utterly transformative that we might not recognize ourselves on the other side? How do we empty ourselves of the past, like the lungs release a breath, so as to make room for the next? How do we let go of old solutions that worked until they became the new problem?
Just who do you think you are being loyal to when you refuse to change?
Much in life is heartbreakingly incurable, but healing is always available.
~Michael Max, qiological.com