Illness and Insight
President Joe Biden recently had Covid, and got the time and perspective he needed to leave the race and endorse Kamala Harris. Big Swing. Big Risk. But he could see clearly what he had to do from that state of illness. He had time to accept the risk and make the move.
I recently had a rather mild bought with Covid, so of course, in my fever, and in between television programs — that were stupid enough to be able to follow, but not so stupid that I could not get the time to pass — I had my own deep insights into illness and creativity. Creativity is not dormant in illness, even if activity is.
Your Essential Self
This morning, Yahoo Entertainment reports, 90-year-old Shirley MacLaine was spotted out for lunch in Malibu. When a reporter asked about getting out and socializing, MacLaine talked about her Covid seclusion, during the pandemic.
“I came to the mountains in New Mexico and I just, I really practically didn’t see anybody for a year. That was an interesting experience.”
“I think it’s good being in touch with what many of us had been losing,” she added, “A sense of who we basically and centrally are, even with all of what goes on in our businesses and social life.”
Illness can remove you from your social setting and therefore your social self. You are typically more in touch with your essential self. Your social self is usually the driver in your life — get that promotion, meet that goal, earn that award — but your essential self has the map. You may be a driven, ambitious, successful person. And what is the value of that if you’ve long since forgotten the map.
Many of us fight sickness, try not to take time off or succumb to it. Driving that denial is the machismo, the ego of your social self. But if you rest and relax, and allow the illness to prevail as it must eventually anyway, your essential self may have the opportunity to get your attention and cause a course-correction.
Mortality and Urgency
Illness can also create a sense of mortality and urgency. You have the clear vision, and perhaps you have the insight that you’ve been wasting time.
Beethoven, Ulysses S. Grant, Robert Lewis Stevenson all come to mind when you think of illness intertwined with creativity. Beethoven’s deafness, Ulysses S. Grant’s cancer, and Robert Lewis Stevenson’s tuberculosis were the mettle against which they individually waged their creative battles — to express themselves inspite of, bec of, in fear of, and in opposition to the fatal clock.
Whether you are fighting mortality, feeling the urgency of time wasted going in the wrong direction, or simply feeling inspiration and excitement for a new clarity of vision, illness can give you opportunity to reconnect with your essential self, and travel with new motivation and new direction.
It may just give you what you need to get back to that idea of yourself — the writer.
