Practical Wisdom: What Feeling Sick Taught Me About This Moment

I am back among the living after a deep sickness and a kind of purging that took more than it gave. The kind of sickness that rearranges time and insists on stillness without negotiation.

I slept. Deeply. Without effort. Without guilt.

I let my body take what it needed without commentary or productivity. In that long, quiet drift, I had time to contemplate. Time to feel what I usually move past. Time to notice what I have been avoiding not because I am unaware, but because I’m human.

Stillness has a way of pulling the curtain back.

When the body is forced to stop, the mind eventually follows. And when both soften, something honest arrives. Not answers or solutions – but clarity nonetheless.

I don’t say much publicly about politics, and when I do, it’s with care. Not because I’m indifferent, but because I’m deeply aware that there is no single answer and no group of people defined by color, value system, geography, or creed who are “all alike.” I know how easily we reduce each other into caricatures when fear is loud.

Each day, I try to be present and kind. That is not a bypass. It’s a practice. I remember that many people are afraid. Many are angry. Many are deeply saddened by the state of things. And many are exhausted by carrying all of it at once.

If I can offer anything, perhaps it’s a brief respite. A moment of kindness. A reminder that softness is not weakness and that tenderness still matters.

I have dear friends and family in many corners of thought and belief. We don’t always agree, and we do not try to convert each other. We try, instead, not to step on each other’s freedoms. Having an opinion is an important freedom. Choosing your path daily is an important freedom. And I am only as free as I am willing to let others be.

That is harder than it sounds.

It requires restraint. It requires humility. It requires learning when silence is a form of respect rather than avoidance. Sometimes we choose respectful quiet because preserving the heart matters more than winning the point. We find our way together slowly, imperfectly, with pauses and missteps and grace where we can manage it.

Lately, I feel an increasing pressure from some who feel I should stand against rather than align with. To sharpen language. To pick a side loudly. To prove something. That has never been my way. The world does not heals through constant opposition. Still, silence can grow heavy, and so I am offering these words not as a stance, but as a witnessing.

Yesterday, as I lay in bed, awake but still aching, I did something I do not recommend. I saturated myself in social media, intentionally reading from several different perspectives. It was like standing in the middle of a storm made entirely of voices, each convinced they were the only sane ones left.

What became painfully obvious is how thoroughly we are being manipulated. Like the story about two kinds of ants in a shaken jar, set against each other, fighting furiously without truly seeing who is doing the shaking. It’s a clever distraction. It keeps us busy blaming one another while our shared ground erodes beneath us.

Most people do not wake up wanting harm. Most people wake up wanting safety, dignity, and some assurance that their lives matter. When those things feel threatened, fear rushes in. Fear is loud. Fear is contagious. Fear rarely leads us somewhere wise.

And so I pray.

I pray each day that we grow wiser rather than more frenzied. That we slow enough to question the narratives being handed to us. That a new path emerges, one not paved with outrage but with discernment. One that allows us to come from the heart without surrendering our intelligence.

I pray that we find our way back into each other’s humanity. That we remember the sound of a real laugh, the ache of real grief, the shared longing for belonging. That we appreciate the common ground beneath our feet instead of only pointing at the lines someone else has drawn between us.

I hold a vision of an awakened people. Not awakened in the performative sense but awake enough to recognize what is holy and good. Awake enough to protect life, dignity, and what truly matters.

This sickness stripped me down. It reminded me that the body is wise and the soul is patient. It asked me to listen more than speak. To feel more than react. To choose alignment over opposition even when the noise insists otherwise.

I am not offering answers. I am offering presence. I am offering a hand extended quietly across the space where shouting usually lives.

May we find our way back to one another, choosing compassion, discernment, and accountability in how we hold the world. And may we find our way back to each other’s hearts.