The Only Time I've Used Geometry

So I was in the hospital for two days this week, which is actually the shortest hospital stay I've ever had. Usually I end up there when my intestines become so inflamed that they stop working, and it usually takes a week, sometimes two, to get them back on track (pun intended).

This time, it was just a stomach bug, which causes inflammation in healthier bodies, escalating in mine like a vat of gasoline embracing a match. 

I've dealt with vomit and weird bowel movements for as long as I can remember, so that I can handle....it was the pain that sent me to the ER. Understandably I have a pretty high pain tolerance; most of the time I don't even feel it and can only tell that I'm in pain when I realize that I've turned irrationally irritable or emotional.  So for me to feel so much pain that I can't sleep.....usually means it's severe. 

In this case, "not as bad as it could've been" was the medical consensus. They still found a few things that have made a few of my friends gasp, but apparently that's not too much of a concern when it comes my body. 

***

It's funny. I've had this disease for almost two decades now, and have faced a wide range of emotions regarding others who get sick. For instance, I have a few close friends with bad cases of Celiac Disease, and I'm genuinely jealous, because their bodies can actually heal themselves, whereas mine eventually requires surgery to have the most diseased pieces of me removed. 

And then there are others who've had one medical difficulty, perhaps similar to the "non-concerns" the doctors found in my body this week, and it's their backstory. It's the story they tell on a first date, the defining moment of who they are, something shared as casually as their sign but with the same sock value as what's recently been in our news. 

And it's hard to even associate with people who revere their quick dashes of bad health, when medically I should be able to empathize. But my conditions are finite; hopeless, without cure or resolve; something that will live with me until the day I die, and perhaps even continue in my spawn should I choose to prolong this.

But unlike those who immortalize their medical records, I have chosen a legacy beyond this. 

For them, 

I've learned to repeat to myself that "everyone right now is facing the worst thing they've ever faced."  

Like similar triangles, the size of the situation is irrelevant because the angle from which we face our circumstance is the same. 

And for myself,

I have decided to change my other angles. 

I see them as my outlook, and what I can achieve in spite of the cards I was dealt.

I took a hard situation and polished and sanded it down, smoothing it into something beautiful. 

And the ability to do so is my skill. My backstory. My defining characteristic.  

To be given chaos and still move closer to the equilibrium of the equilateral, to bring myself perpetually closer to the life I want. 

And maybe just maybe, this is a skill that I can inspire in those around me that they can share with those around them, and collectively we can scrap and sand down this Trump polish our country back towards equilibrium and peace. 

 

What I'm Watching And Thinking

I've recently been marathoning The West Wing, which is, of course, yet another demonstration of Sorkin's brilliance.
It's interesting, however, to see what is still relevant from a show that first aired almost 20 years ago.

Clearly some things are severely outdated, for instance the need to stress the importance of the internet and what it could do for the world.  These fictional people leading the country preferred to use boxes upon boxes of documents when their secretaries suggested they digitize them instead...when's the last time you heard someone say "digitize"?  Nowadays that's the standard; printing is what we suggest on a rare occasion instead.
But speaking of secretaries, it'll surprise none of you who know me to hear that I'm irked by the casual sexism of twenty years ago.  All of the "be a man" or "he was defeated by a girl" lines.  One of the only strong women on this show is compared to Lady MacBeth... Being a man doesn't mean being strong.  Being defeated by a girl doesn't imply humiliation.  And why, if you're not a secretary serving a man (because of course all of them are women), and instead you're a strong and passionate woman are you likened to a woman who orchestrated a murderous coup?
I'm sure she was the inspiration for that one specific character, and yet in this Universe you either have to chose to be weak or murderous...unless you're the one exception: CJ Craig.  And yet she isn't treated fairly either.  When she walks into a room from a dinner function, the men tell her she looks great, but they don't compliment each other.  Clearly this mentality is child to the fifties and sixties when there were very few women in power and that was the generation after women had the right to vote.

So when we are the following generation....how is it that we're still fighting for equal pay and equal rights?  There are more CEOs named John than all women combined.

And that brings us to what's still relevant from this seventeen year-old show:

To be honest it's a little disturbing to see what prejudices we are still fighting.

An episode I just watched depicted politicians and society's predisposition to unfairly judging Muslims; "that's the price you pay for having the same physical features as criminals," the President's second in command remarks.  In another episode they say "Islamic Extremists is to Islam as the K.K.K. is to Christianity."  How is it that two decades later we still haven't learned this?

In the the first season there is a shooting where one of the President's aids was the target.  This was because he was a black man dating the President's white daughter.  This as well as some discussion on the number of black men in prison, feels oddly familiar.

How is it that a writer know to accurate portray society is touching upon the themes we still need to hear today?  Perhaps because we didn't hear the message the first time.  Hopefully we'll progress more in the next twenty years and I can look back on this post and think it impossible that we would need such reminders that all people are equal.  Everyone bleeds, everyone loves, everyone is doing whatever they can to find happiness.  And if they scares us, it's because we don't understand and that makes it our responsibility to learn (not theirs to teach).
I truly hope we grow.