The other day I was sitting in French class, the other students’ sniffles making me shift in discomfort. I don’t want to get sick. I got home and reflected on how often I am uncomfortable, afraid of illness these days. Sure, I go about my daily life, but always with caution, always with the fear in the back of my head that someone around me is going to give me a disease.

I eat in restaurants, but rush my meals when I hear coughing. I go to the store, but squirm as I decide if I should deal with the risk of being unmasked, or the social humiliation of masking. Before covid, there were at least times I felt comfortable, unworried about my fragility and tendency to get sick. Since covid though, I realize I am always on edge.  

It is exhausting to worry all the time, my hyper vigilance is draining me.  Long ago, LP Nut used to talk about enlightenment as putting down a burden. I remember one time I read a talk from LP Thoon, he said at the moment of death, a person feels relief to be free of their body. I am suddenly starting to see how this overwhelming obsession with my body could be a burden to be put down. How I could find relief in not being so overly concerned.

This clinging to a fragile, decaying, uncontrollable object, my body, this body, is the source of my suffering. I AM THE SOURCE OF MY SUFFERING. But I believe I ‘need’ this body. I am so enamored with the future fantasy I have created –a fantasy contingent upon this body, that I endure definite daily stress today over some future maybe life I can have, as long as I have this body, tomorrow.

I am so tired. I don’t want this suffering of worry about a breakable body breaking anymore, and yet I am so attached to what I imagine it to be, what I imagine I need it for, I can’t put down this burden. The problem however though is that all I ever buy is duration. I pray, I make merit and dedicate it, I work hard at health, I try to avoid disease all for what –the hope that this breakable body will endure just a little longer. I suffer so blindly for some extra days. How is it that I see this as worth it? How is this a tradeoff I am willing to make?

Obviously, my mind knows damn well what this body is; a temporary thing, so fragile, prone to illness and death. If I didn’t know that, I wouldn’t be so constantly worried about it. And yet, I can’t stop worrying because I still love it so much. Despite the fact that I hurt, because of my obsession with my body, my heart can’t accept what it is, the inevitable impending loss. I am so committed to this body because my heart won’t accept any version of a future reality without it.

On some level of course, I am forced to admit that any given future I have imagined, planned for, is and will be mooted by reality. The future, this body, the are not under my control; I am subject to the flowing narrative of the world, not the architect, the sovereign,  the great arranger.

Here in Paris, I am largely enjoying myself, at least in so far as stress about, and the real pains of, this body allow. My asthma though has been super aggravated. I had to reconcile myself to the fact we may need to go home early so I can get additional meds and treatment. It’s not what I want, and it hurts so bad to imagine a different future than the Paris adventure I have concocted in my mind, that I have become so attached to, even though the fantasy is only a few months old.

 But here, in my disease is the truth that this body I view, I cling to, as a tool for achieving the future I want, can in fact be what drives me to a future I do not want. Actually, it inevitable does drive me to a future I don’t want –sickness, aging, death, that is the future this body guarantees. It does not guarantee whatever adventures I have fantasized, in fact, it frequently acts against those, forcing me to adjust, to wiggle, to accept loss and work to build again. Maybe losing this body, is just like losing my plans to stay in Paris, something I adjust to, wiggle, accept the loss and build again. Everyday, over and over, this same pattern repeats. So much stress, so much mourning, simply because I can’t put down what I am attached to and let this world keep ticking on without me.