A Lesson From Being Sick

May 7, 2023

Over the last week, I have not been all that well. I hurt my foot really badly, to the point where I couldn’t walk on it and had to get an x-ray and ultrasound on it, and I also got another COVID jab, which has made me feel really groggy. But, like with every experience, there’s something to be learned.

Over the last week, all I cared about was getting healthy again. That’s all I was focused on. And none of my previous worries mattered.

There’s a quote that reiterates this point:

“A healthy man wants a thousand things, a sick man only wants one.” - Confucius

But the flip side of this realisation that I had never previously taken into account was how futile the vast majority of our concerns are. We worry about so much, and what for? Most of our worries don’t matter. It’s just that when we are healthy and are consumed by so many things, we tend to worry about them. It’s almost as if we need things to worry about in order to have something to do.

So, what’s the way out of this? Unfortunately, this question will only give us more to worry about and thus, only contributing to the cycle. Now, this would imply that nothing can be done about us worrying. But who knows? How can anyone answer definitively such an abstract question? How I see it is that it is what it is. We can understand that we behave like this. We can remind ourselves that we do this, so that when we are feeling worried, we can tell ourselves that our worries are not all that important. We can dig deeper to further understand for each and every one of us, as individuals, why we do this and thus, strengthen our understanding of ourselves. It’s up to you.

Working on…

Since I haven’t been all that well this week, I haven’t been working on much. I’ve made some updates to my virtual_assistant. I haven’t published them on GitHub yet, but that’ll come.

However, I also have a few ideas for projects. I’m considering building my own VPN. And when I release Śūnyatā, I’ve thought of building my own dashboard that tracks the expenses and cost of the ads I’ll be running on the film. If you’re interested in me writing about my progress with any of these projects or anything else, let me know.