So What?

It's interesting to have a condition like fibromyalgia, which for me, sometimes makes an appearance in the transitional seasons, Spring and Fall. Happily, the really awful years of the illness are past and I can usually be pretty functional even when I have symptoms, and most of the year be just fine and dandy. But when the illness asserts itself, in addition to being quite tired much of the time, and having some joint discomfort, I often find myself in a kind of altered state. I lose language, which you'd think would be terrible for a writer, but oddly it isn't bad. It makes me think in a different way, maybe the way people think when they take some kinds of mind-altering drugs (my experience with those have been nil, so I can't really say, but from what I've read my experience is similar). Everything slows down. I even feel my pulse get sluggish. My eyes unfocus, and the world seems like an Impressionist painting. When I relax into it, it actually feels kind of good. And probably is good for me. At least it forces me to reduce my stress level to nearly non-existent. It took me a long time to be able to do this, to just relax into it. Years, in fact. But when I fight it, it lasts longer, gets into my joints, is painful and frustrating. So now I just sit back and enjoy it. So what if I just stupidly gaze at 'pretty flowers,' and can't remember that they're called nasturtiums? So what if I read the same sentence in a book five times before I can understand it well enough to move on to the next one? I just try to read sentences that are really fine ones when I'm in a fibro fog. Annie Dillard or Thoreau are good. So what if I sit out by the brook and watch our dogs and rabbit snarf around all afternoon. It's kind of like being four again. It's kind of soothing.
One thing I've learned from this whole fibro fog thing is the pleasure of not fighting, of just being. So the exercise of the day is to say So What. So what if the dishes don't get done. So what if you serve scrambled eggs for dinner instead of roast lamb, then go sit in the backyard and Just Be. It won't kill anybody, least of all yourself. Notice the pretty flowers. Notice the clouds. Notice the leaves falling like snow around you. Then write it, draw it. But only if you feel like. Otherwise, say So What till tomorrow.