Jonathots Daily Blog
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Seems like an odd landmark, doesn’t it? Day 504.
But it came to my mind, and when I counted up the days, that’s the number I ended up with.
It is exactly 504 days since I woke up in Fremont, Ohio, with my legs so stiff, sore, cramping and aching that for all intents and purposes I was not able to walk. Therefore I thought it was time for an update.
Let me start with one of the greatest statements that can ever be made by a human:
It’s not worse.
After 504 days, that original cramping and debilitation did not place me permanently in a wheelchair, unable to move, travel, interact with human beings or even dress myself. I think we miss a rare opportunity in life when we don’t celebrate the absence of things getting worse.
Because quite bluntly, my friends–they can. There are diseases, problems, afflictions and habits that are avalanches toward disaster. It did not get worse.
Secondly–it’s better.
How is it better? I’m walking more than I was before. The stiffness is not as bad. The knees are still achy, but somehow or another, the beautiful construction of my human anatomy has enabled me to get accustomed to it, and I am able to perform all of my tasks with the same vigor I had in my twenties. Now for a third thought:
I am better.
Here is something I want you to consider: we are temporarily blessed in pleasure but perfected in pain. Why is that?
If we don’t feel a sense of our own mortality and are unaware of our own weaknesses, we begin to think that everything that comes into our minds is valuable instead of in need of a good interrogation.
I am better because complete mobility and self-sufficiency is not at my fingertips–or in this case, my toe tips.
- It makes me appreciate everything more.
- It makes me plan more efficiently.
- It causes me to be sensitive when I look across the room and see someone with a cane, a walker or nursing a limp.
- And finally, it has transformed my meager thinking into the understanding that life is about “better.”
Although I hear both religious and secular people lamenting the condition of the world around them, our thermometers should be set to notice the slightest change in degree of improvement.
Those who have the sensitivity to peer through the darkness and find one candle of light are the souls that sustain us to a better tomorrow.
So on day 504, I am happy to report that my condition is not worse. It’s better.
And because I have gone through it, I am better, converted to the philosophy–and powerful it is–that life is about better.
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