What You Don’t Have…

My brother , Ted, and I were talking the other night about exercise. He has started to exercise and has decided that he hates it. He finds it very boring. I told him that I love to exercise. For over a year, I would get up at 4:15 am, get to the gym by 5:00, work out until 6:00, and go home to get ready for work. Every day, Monday through Friday, for over a year.

Why did I start? I felt that I need to get into shape, lose weight and generally try to get healthier.

Why did I stop? My arthritis came out of remission and my joints started swelling up.

Have I ever mentioned that I have rheumatoid arthritis? Well, I do. In case you didn’t know this interesting little fact…there are over 100 different varieties of arthritis. The kind I used to have was called “palindromic rheumatism”. Not sure if that is spelled right but it is the way it is pronounced. It meant that I would have a joint swell up and become sore, like my knee. Then that joint would get better after a day or two and another joint would swell up, like my shoulder. Then that would get better and another joint would act up. And so on and so forth. My doctor put me on an anti-inflammatory drug and for a number of years, I couldn’t even tell I had arthritis.

Then I began noticing some changes. The medicine didn’t seem to be as effective. We adjusted things and it would work for a while but my doctors were pretty sure my arthritis had changed direction. We managed to keep things under control until May of 2009. I had a couple of joints swell up and they didn’t go back down. Then a couple of other joints and a couple of others. And they weren’t going away.  They were swelling up and staying that way until pretty much every joint in my body had inflammation in it. We tried re-adjusting the medicine but it didn’t work. I had to stop exercising because, frankly, it was just getting to painful to even walk let alone work out.

I am on different medicine now and things are more under control. But I still have pretty high inflammation levels and my doctor has told me that I really can’t exercise at this point. There is too much of chance I could seriously hurt myself (pull a ligament or damage a joint). So as much as I love to exercise, I simply can’t do it.

I was thinking about this the other night after Ted and I had this conversation. He can exercise but hates it. I can’t exercise but love it.

Why is it things happen this way? I think that it is odd that people want to do things they simply can not do. Other than the exercise example, I thought of a couple of others:

There are children who would love to get straight A’s. Dream about it. Long for it. They study and study and try so hard yet the only grades they can achieve are B’s and C’s (and maybe even D’s and F’s). They just don’t have the intellectual capacity to do better yet they really would love to do better. Then there are children who have the intellectual capacity to get straight A’s. With only a little effort, they would be top students in all of their classes. Yet, they would prefer not to study and get by with B’s and C’s. They are capable of doing what other students could never achieve yet they don’t have any interest in living up to their potential. They hate studying and don’t see the value in it. The other students love studying and definitely see the value in it.

Another example I thought of is infertile women. There are women who would LOVE to have a baby. They dream about it. Long for it. Go through a whole slew of difficult, expensive, humiliating and disappointing medical procedures in order to become pregnant. Yet they can not get pregnant. Then there are other women who get pregnant by just thinking about it…or so it seems. Through no more effort than just simply having sex, they can get pregnant. Some of these women hate that this happens They have no desire to be pregnant. They don’t want babies. They dislike having children of their own and don’t want them. The other women would LOVE to have children and want them more than anything.

I don’t think this is a matter of “the grass is always greener”. That phrase is more about coveting items. Such as wishing you could afford the expensive car your neighbor just bought. Or you wish you could afford the IPad that your friend just bought.

This longing for wanting what you don’t have in the examples I gave before is deeper than coveting. It is a deep longing for something that other people just simply take for granted. This longing can occupy your thoughts in a way that you can become obsessive about it. It creeps into your thoughts day and night sometimes to the point that it is almost crippling. It takes over your life to the point that your life, as it should be, ceases to be the way it should be or the way it was before you became obsessed. It affects your relationships with your friends, family and pretty much everyone else you meet.

What can you do? The only thing you can do is to accept the limitations Life has placed on your life. Learn to appreciate what you have and stop longing for things you can’t do or can’t have because it just simply will not happen. I am not saying this lightly because I know it is incredibly difficult. But wouldn’t it be better to accept things as they are than try to change things you can’t?

I didn’t write all this as a sermon on how to live your life or try to trivialize the pain and hardship that people go through in dealing with issues. Rather I wrote this to look at the other side of the story. To draw attention to people on the side of the story who may not appreciate the gifts they have been given. Not to make them feel guilty but to maybe open their eyes.

Maybe someone who can exercise and hates it will appreciate that their body can move as it should and they are able to maintain their good health. Maybe the student who glides by and gets average grades will appreciate the intellect they have been blessed with and apply themselves and achieve better grades. Finally, maybe the woman who is fertile will appreciate the gift she has been given and maybe, just maybe, chose to help an infertile woman become a mother.

Then again, human nature is as human nature is and all the “maybe’s” in the world won’t change how people behave. Although, being the eternal optimist that I am, I can certainly hope for that change. And, through writing about it, do a small part to instigate that change.