As I was picking up the sticks in the yard left strewn all over from the freak thunderstorm that ravaged Massachusetts yesterday, my mind got thinking. I mean, what else are you going to do while you bend over repeatedly and pick up the smallest of all sticks? The fragility of it all. I watched as the storm came, observed its fury and intensity, and then it left, leaving blue skies and white puffy clouds behind. As if nothing had ever happened. Yet we could see the vegetation damage, we could hear the sirens answering distress calls of drivers, and you could understand the frustration of the many without power. When I woke my children up this morning, my son told me he didn’t want to go in another bus again. Why?, I asked. He started recounting his trip back from Hampton Beach yesterday in the violent storm that made the bus pull over and wait it out due to poor visibility (thank you to that smart bus driver!). As they waited, he told me a tree feel down right behind their bus and the hail was so loud on the roof! It started to sink in again…the fragility of it all.
Acupuncture and Chinese Medicine understand the fragility and the need for balance in this lifetime with the bodies we are given. Yet, with our lifestyles and expectations, we throw our bodies out of alignment many times a day. Acupuncture helps put the body back into it’s homeostatic state, where it wants to be, while assisting it to heal itself with time. One of the main reasons I left Western Medicine and became an acupuncturist-herbalist is because I do this work with compassion and respect for the fragility of it all in each of my clients.
That compassion is what may be missing in our everyday lives. Compassion for ourselves, for our loved ones, for people we have never met that we encounter on the street, for animals. We are possibly experiencing that lack of compassion now with the outrage towards the dentist who hunted Cecil and the dentist’s choices on that safari, the BLM who corrals wild mustangs and causes unnecessary harm, the increased use of illegal drugs and the unnecessary deaths that follow, the way people treat people unjustly and without kindness…the list could go on…unfortunately. It is through the eyes of compassion that we may be able to heal the wounds of our community/world as well as ourselves….micro and macro. I choose to start with individuals and by using acupuncture and compassion.
This morning I heard a song and looked up the lyrics…how true they seemed to ring with this blog’s title: Acupuncture, Compassion and the Fragility of it all”:
“So far beyond our needs, a welfare problem
We read our magazines, but actions speak louder than words.
What end justify the means? Reality — insanity.
Why can’t you open your eyes?
Why can’t you open your mind?
Why can’t you open your eyes?
It’s all in our hands, this could be a last chance.
Almost out of breath and life
And people all around the world are watching
Almost out of breath and life
And all over the world we’re doing nothing.”
– Out Of Breath, Neverstore
What are you going to do today to impact your life, your health, and those around you? First, recognize the Fragility of it all.