Identity and Lyme disease

I find it interesting when people say, “I’m not going to let this or this define me.” I mean I understand the literal and also the deeper meaning, but I’m always curious as to why it needs to be stated at all. My guess is because as humans we are already predisposed to discriminating and organizing pretty much everything and anything we encounter. We want to be able to have control over things, however illusory that control is. And defining and categorizing helps us create the illusion. The illusion of control.

So we look at people and we begin the never-ending calculations in trying to “know” someone as well as trying to figure ourselves out. We see ourselves as separate entities, as individuals.

Anyway, back to the identity issue. I guess I started thinking about it when I came across a post or rather several in a Lyme forum. “I will not let Lyme define me” someones wrote. And while I agree, I don’t want Lyme to”define” me either, it is still, at least right now, a huge part of my life. Oh, yes, do I ever want control over it though! But just saying something doesn’t define me doesn’t mean it doesn’t define me in other people’s or even in my own mind. I mean when we get down to it is there anything that really clearly defines us from one another as humans/people? I argue no.

Anyway, I realize this is all kinda philosophical mumbo jumbo but the brain keeps itself busy when the body is broken. Well, at least now that the fog and the mental confusion have improved in my brain area.

Wasn’t it Walt Whitman who wrote, “I sing the body electric”? he goes on, ” Was it doubted that those who corrupt their own bodies conceal themselves? / And if those who defile the living are as bad as they who defile the dead? / And if the body does not do fully as much as the soul?/And if the body were not the soul, what is the soul?”

Some beautiful words to ponder about who we are and how we figure ourselves and others out, or at least try to. Check out Whitman’s complete poem, “I Sing the Body Electric”, at http://www.poetryfoundation.org.

Wishing you a wonderful pain free day. Peace, B