Wonder 37

Charlie

I had one more personal day before I had to return to the clinic. I decided to spend it alone. Time to think and time to be.

While I was painting after breakfast, I realized that this was the first day alone I’d ever spent. Growing up, somebody was always around. I wondered what I’d discover.

I heard the ten o’clock ferry blow its horn, and I realized I had the whole island to myself. All my neighbors spent the day on the mainland. I was completely alone on an island in the middle of the bay.

I took a dip in the pool and went for a jog. I didn’t even bother putting on clothes–why, if there was no one to see?

Running in my bare skin on my bare feet through the wild island meadows brought a strange feeling, both powerful and vulnerable.

Blood raced through my veins, my muscles were pumped, my lungs filled with air and emptied again–this was vitality and the strength of being alive.

At the same time, here I was an insignificant dot of sinew and flesh on this tiny island in the middle of the bay.

I was the center of my experience, and at the same time a speck of no-notice in the grand scheme of things, mighty and tiny all at once.

This seemed like a profound realization to me–something that might be significant for a healer to understand.

What are we? We are both the center of our experience and part of the whole.

I wondered if each cell in our bodies had that same type of doubleness: imagine each cell being the center of its system, its awareness, while also being a tiny part of the whole.

Health must be related to this: bring integrity to the small unit, and health is achieved in the whole. Provide health to the whole, and integrity will be brought to the tiny unit.

The family is like this, too, I thought later in the day.

Even now that I’m living on my own, I’m still part of them–they’re still part of me. We share an inter-being which connects us always.

Solitude felt rich when I contemplated it from this perspective. Solitude isn’t the same as separate or alone. I’m still connected to everyone and everything, just one more cell in the big scheme of the Universe.

I spent the evening researching. I was surprised to see how many clinics incorporate holistic healing into their practices. Not only that, but the financials for these clinics are head and shoulders above the traditional medicine clinics. I’ll follow Tia Berry’s advice and learn the profession first, but when I’m ready to start incorporating new approaches, I can see there’ll be a market for it!

I began to feel eager to return to the clinic the next day. Insight and inspiration were with me now. I was ready.

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