down with the sickness
"Why don't you just take some real medicine?" -asked my aunt this past week when the cold season finally caught up with me.
No big deal, just a sniffle here and a cough there and a raging headache on top of it. I'm a tough cookie and my active lifestyle and healthy diet are medicine enough. Sometimes sickness just reminds you to stfu and slow down, which maybe I needed.
But to my family, being ill, at any intensity, for any duration, is grounds for stress and panic. I'm not sure whether this comes from the fortune cookie saying "No greater wealth than health" because true, one cannot enjoy all life has to offer when one is sick. Or maybe (and this is what I'm cautiously and disappointedly leaning towards), if one is sick, one cannot work. Or go to school (to get a job to work) Or raise children (who will grow up to work) A natural primitive concern if we serve in the same community- sickness>death>burden on others.
The American perspective (more individualized and insane than that of the West, in general) from the top of the food chain demands that we not "give in" to sickness, accept our vulnerability and, most of all, allow ourselves and each other to slow down and be sick. Because, we are humans! We are better than Nature! We are better than Death!
...and because your company needs to turn a higher profit this year. So chin up, get outta bed, drug yourself to numbness and let's make sure you never feel this signal of distress from your body because that's some hippie shit and real men WORK through their flu.
Having bought season passes to the American Dream, my aunt, grandmother, stepmother, father, even my little sister are always insisting that I take medicine. And by medicine, they mean that stuff in a bottle with a 14 syllable name that sounds like the fucking demon of Pharmaland that you can only get from mysterious prescriptions magical almighty Westernized doctors bestow on you that you must then pay top dollar$$$ for! As if the less we know about it, the better it must be. As if only Western society and their precise sciences and machines could understand something as universal as the body. As if it won't "work" unless your practitioner paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to study this modern medicine (germ theory, virology, surgery, pharmaceuticals- treating of the symptoms and not of the root) that's been around for like hmmm...200 YEARS?! Versus 2000+ year old holistic Eastern modalities that use and integrate plants, animals, the human body, mind and spirit, and the all encompassing ecology?
Did you know iatrogenic (physician-caused) diseases is actually the 3rd leading cause of death in the United States?
As if this chicken noodle soup, this ginger lemonade, this astragalus tea, this oranges, lemons, kumquats, these guavas, papayas, cherimoya, this bone broth, this whole grain, this excercise, this garlic, pepper, mint!- is this all bullshit? Have 2000 years of billions of people been wrong? Have we been in the dark or are you blinded by the light?
Chicken soup or robotussin? Tulsi tea or xanax? Ginger chew or pepto bismol?
We've known this, individually and collectively, for ages. We know this deep in the pits of our bellies- FOOD. IS. MEDICINE. Don't trust it if you can't eat it ;D
How? How did we forget something so important...?
While ya'll contemplate this, I'm gonna enjoy being quiet, catch up on reading, not working, and eating delicious medicine 🍊☕🍲🍸