"hope gave me a chance"

You are reading http://livinginthehood.blogspot.com

it didn't give me a guarantee, but it gave me a chance.

Hope and expectation releases endorphines in the brain, which act like opium, relieving pain.

Hope is completely clear-eyed. It's not blind optimism.

What true hope does is: you make a choice for yourself, based on knowledge.

Optimism, false hope, take away power.

Sometimes, the tumor doesn't read the text book.

Shift the focus of hope as things evolve, if there isn't a good clinical outcome, from the body to the spirit...people look to the future to reconcile themselves...

The human will is extraordinarily powerful.

"How people prevail in the face of illness: the anatomy of hope"
JEROME GROOPMAN, "The New Yorker"

Good ol' Charlie Rose had him on tonight.

I know for a FACT this guy's right about brain chemistry; it's been happening to me since I began this journey into self love.

The ballet exercises make my legs hurt like hell, as I stretch out atrophy and tension. I mean this HURTS! And I walked far, at a RAPID pace, today.

But this pain is far different than the pain I was in before: this is the pain of healing and it feels HOPEFUL!

He was in bad shape, too, from a spinal injury, I think. He was scared to move, too.

He had that bottom line moment, too: it's going to hurt, but so what? It's what is.

I don't want to be an accomplice to my own disability.

Like him, I've given the pain all my power, made it central to what I do in my life.

There is no "working through the pain;" I'll always be in pain. I finally figured that out.

So, since I'm going to be in pain, I may as well be in pain because I'm strengthening myself, instead of weakening myself, huh?

Now, how not to let the pain ruin things. I get so DAMNED cranky, when my body is stressed! And I get abusive. If others' slowness, ineptitude or whatever causes me more pain, I get vengeful.

THEY don't know they've caused me pain!

When I'm in too much pain, I get so desperate. Everything gets urgent. Because I want to get it over with, so I can rest.

See, that's another thing: at the station, I couldn't express any frustration at the pain I was in. Not directly, anyway. I wish I knew the answer to this question: Was I louder and more distracting when my pain was louder and more distracting?

THAT's interesting!

Not that I was all that loud, or distracting, relative to others.

But I wonder...how does the pain I feel affect my relationships with people???

Man, I have a LOT of paying attention to do!