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Keep gliding, tumors and all. [1]

['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']

Date: 2023-09-30  

This week was like most lately, full of partisan flame throwing, Republican assassination plots, shutdowns, and climate change wreckage. It breaks my heart to see NYC underwater. I was just there last weekend. Swimming through the polluted mess of our national politics can be really bad for our health. It can be especially harmful and depressing when we have more immediate problems with our own bodies and selves.

So allow me to introduce our family betta fish.

She has developed a large tumor in her once beautiful blue iridescent tail.

I’ve faithfully changed the water in her tank on a weekly basis for over 2 years. This involves scooping her up and out in a small net, inverting it, and then depositing her into a small cup of water until her verdant plastic world can be cleaned up and created anew. She wriggles and squirms in my wet fingers for a second or two. You can feel her momentary desperation to return to the water, to keep living.

I do telemedicine visits from home with human patients a few days here and there. Yesterday was one such day.

I brought the betta fish downstairs and placed her next to my laptop as I saw people. There was the usual staggering array of problems. A son who died, a grandson who died, sleepless nights of anguish, tumors, new diabetes, intractable pains, memories lost, motor skills lost, a new tremor, hearts and heads and knees aching. Spirits breaking.

The betta fish swam peacefully throughout the day, her mangled tail anchored by a kind of senseless and insistent life gone rogue. It tipped her upwards when she rested.

Waves of human symptoms. Dizziness, tinnitus, nauseousness. I consoled. I conveyed empathy as my mind swam through scintillating connections and patterns and data and intuitions to formulate plans, work ups, and treatments.

I don’t know if the betta fish senses this tumor. She keeps swimming, eating, and writhing powerfully when I change her water. She glides with grace through her world, pausing here and there to rest and observe. There seems to be no burden of expectation, no dreams of the future compromised or lost. Just swimming. Gliding.

Some explain unhappiness as the gulf between the reality of our present circumstances and our expectations of how we dreamed our lives would be.

Should be.

A trick to finding peace, satisfaction, and even happiness is to recalibrate our expectations. To accept what we cannot change. The state of our affairs. Aging, degeneration, reduced capacity. To glide when we can no longer run.

I won’t be able to fix the tail of our betta fish. A need for compassion may arise someday. But for now she is swimming despite it all. I imagine there is still pleasure in a fresh tank of water. A pinch of food floating on the surface to be snapped down into her belly. A sense of not being alone.

She keeps gliding.

Keep gliding.

Everyone.

Keep on.

***********

This post originally published on a Substack I write called Examined. The door is open :)

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/9/30/2196533/-Keep-gliding-tumors-and-all

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