a subtle reminder

Today as I sat in my literature class, my mind drifting to talk of transplants, and immunosuppressant drugs, and the potential of a moon face (my ego is a stickler for vanity), as all of this was weighing heavily on me, an odd topic of conversation came up. Reading 'The Death of Ivan Ilyich' by Tolstoy, we were given the notion that life can't sufficiently be understood/appreciated without also the knowledge of death. For Ivan Ilyich, it takes a terminal illness for him to begin a spiritual awakening. As one critic called it 'the double story of the decomposing body and the awakening soul.'

I've forgotten, lately, the potential in having a chronic illness, my own version of a 'floating kidney', if you will. I'm hardly vain enough to flatter myself by saying I've experienced a spiritual awakening from my trials and tribulations with cystic fibrosis, but I've certainly had an alternative perspective on life, versus one who was born healthy as a horse. (Are horses inherently healthy? Never understood that comparison..) I've been so wrapped up in the overwhelming prospect of a complete double lung transplant, and the idea of failed organs, that I've become no better than Mr. Ilyich- it's all my mind focuses on. If nothing else, I'm realizing that the negative state I've been keeping myself in is only detrimental to my own self, and it's not conducive to a healthy/happy existence.

So thank you, Tolstoy, for waking me up from my own internal stupor. It was long overdue.