“It’s been tough. Don’t worry about it anymore. Now go live your life.”
I recently recovered from an operation on an old sports injury and went to see the surgeon in London to get discharged. He could see I was concerned with my progress and what activities and sports I could and could not do. He’d been pretty un-empathetic until that point, so as I was packing up my things he caught me off guard with the above line that ended with, “…now go live your life.”
It was like sunshine filled my eyes, and as it happened, there was a heat wave in London too. I bounded outside with a bounce in my step with licence from a man in a position of authority, to not survive under restraint but to live fully at the limit of my experience.
I believe this has value for us. To query if our most pressing concerns, or physical and mental injuries, are constraining our natural instincts beyond their time and welcome. After a period, we often fall into a routine of living within ourselves predominantly because it’s safe. This throwaway line from an expert surgeon who has probably seen thousands of patients, implicitly told me to break the chains and get back to doing the things I love, which I did with immediate effect: seeing friends, playing with my nephews and picking up sports I was too cautious to try.
I hope you enjoyed the first post and are already looking forward to tomorrow’s. Feel free to leave a comment below, share your experience, or even make a suggestion for a future post.
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