Acquiesce

It’s rare for me to get sick, or at least sick enough to call in to work to say I’m staying home. The last time it happened was during the pandemic when COVID finally caught up to me. And I can ‘easily’ deal with a head cold, but when I recently contracted viral gastroenteritis (stomach flu), I got knocked down for the count. Despite what I thought I knew, despite what I expected of myself, I had to acquiesce to it.

Just a Normal Day

The day started like any other, with a cup of coffee and writing my Morning Pages. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary as I continued through my daily routine. But in hindsight, there were signs that things were off. My coffee didn’t taste good (although it was the same coffee, made the same way) and I didn’t finish it. My ‘normal’ tiredness from getting home late from work the night before was more pronounced. Although I was scheduled to work that afternoon, I went back to bed for not one but two naps. It wasn’t until I was in the shower, when I felt like I would pass out, that I realized something was wrong.

It took all my strength to towel dry and reach the living room sofa, where I collapsed from exhaustion. Then it started. Diarrhea. Nausea. Vomiting. An inability to sit up straight without feeling like I was riding the teacups. Somehow, and miraculously, I made it to the pharmacy without passing out on the half-shoveled sidewalks to purchase Imodium (it didn’t work). Back home, I called work to say I was [foolishly] still trying to make it in. A little past noon, after having forged an intimate relationship with the toilet and bathroom floor I never want to have again, it was time. Time to acquiesce to the situation. I was sick. Sick.

Embrace Reality

No one enjoys being sick, and I’ve always been the type to try and sweat or work it out of my system. Unable to keep anything down for three days, and having no energy, I didn’t go to the gym. I camped out on the sofa—smelly and reminding myself that ‘this too shall pass.’ With a miniscule of energy, I staggered into work to looks of shock and disbelief. I looked terrible, had lost weight (13 pounds), and could still barely stand up for too long before again feeling like I’d pass out. Thirty minutes after I arrived, I was sent home.

But I’m stubborn and returned to work the next day looking slightly better, but not by much. I lasted five hours (mostly because I was in meetings) before my manager and I agreed that I should take the rest of the week off. The hardest thing for me to do was to acquiesce to the ‘request,’ to embrace reality. Because despite my health, I was still demanding too much from myself. I didn’t want to disappoint my team. And, really, I didn’t want to look weak.

Acquiesce

At home, without work hanging over my head, it gave me time to rest. As I regained my strength and appetite, I started to reenter my daily routine. I turned off the TV and, able to concentrate again, read. I finished Ryan Holiday’s The Obstacle is the Way. One passage in particular hit me hard: “You don’t have to like something to master it—or to use it to some advantage. When the cause of our problem lies outside of us, we are better for accepting it and moving on.”¹

When I stopped seeing being sick as an obstacle, that was when I could acquiesce to it, in all its ugliness, and just be. The time to rest at home afforded me the opportunity to, when I was ready, plan my next move—and do the next right thing. With time to think about life, and where I still want to go, I learned the obstacle [me] is the way, and now I’m ready to burst through it.

Let me remind you today that you are loved, you are worthy, and you matter. And you don’t need anyone’s permission to be—wholly and unapologetically—who you are.

1. Holiday, R. (2014, 2024). The Obstacle is the Way: The Timeless Art of Turning Trials into Triumph, Portfolio/Penguin, p. 151. [↩]