On being well and unwell

There are few things as all-encompassingly comfortable as a large soft warm bed. Nestled in soft sheets, with fluffy pillows cradling my head, and the gentle weight of the quilt over me, I feel I need nothing more.

A good bed becomes all the more important when one is sick. Sickness is a different feeling altogether; grey, bleak, and sad. Colours are duller, food tastes awful, TV is boring, music gives one a headache, and people make one irritable. And you want to attack the nurse with a hard pillow for looking so healthy and cheerful.

So, it is a comfort, when sick, to cosset oneself. There must be hot cups of Horlicks, bars of chocolate, and creamy soups and cheese and apples to heal the body and the soul.

I am better now, and it makes all the difference. The sun shines brightly through the window. The birds sound lovely, chirping bravely over the sound of the banging on the construction site opposite, which begins pre-dawn.

After restless nights and horrid days, I begin to appreciate the morning hours again. The light is clear, and encourages happy thoughts. This is the best time to offer up once again, quiet prayers of gratitude and thanks for a peaceful night, and to make a promise of intent over the first morning glass of water, a resolve to spend the day in the best way possible; with kindness and an open heart.

I lie in bed, planning all the good things I will do once I get up.

First, I shall go to the nursery to buy new plants. The nursery is a joy. It is a riot of colour; pinks, blues, and yellows, that glow radiant through the plants' foliage. There are palms and ferns, roses and zinnias, and all to be had for a song.

I take Voltaire's advice very literally, and in my sunset years, cultivate my roof garden, bearing in mind too that the old Buddhist rule of twenty years of study, twenty years of work, twenty years of worldliness, and twenty years of meditation.

Plants are my meditation, devotion, and prayer. There is healing in just being around green things, and the open sky and air. When we observe the rules of nature and the seasons of budding growth and harvest, both in the world and in our lives, we are in harmony with heaven and its laws.

We have been put here on this beautiful planet to rejoice in its bounty for such a short time. We should do and be the very best we can during this time, whatever the roads our lives take. In the general scheme of things, and in the eternal cycles of the Universe, our lives are just a tiny blip on the screen.

They are small, they are modest, but they are our blips, and we should be grateful for this privilege.

Only the Creator knows the reason for our tiny existence, but I know that one day all our questions will be answered.

 Till then, I intend to rejoice in everything; awful sickness, marvellous good health, and everything else too, the good, the bad, and the ugly.

Photo: Collected