I went on a work trip last week. It was intense and exhausting, and didn’t have the best conditions for maintaining my health habits, which resulted in my chronic medical condition recurring again. I thought I had left all that behind since a year ago, but now it’s back. They say you can choose between asking why things happen to you versus what things are teaching you. I was crestfallen initially, but now I see what this recurrence is trying to teach me. 

As always, the body is my harshest teacher.

It tells me when I’m off kilter. It punishes me when I push myself too hard. In this case, I reverted back to old, unwholesome working habits, poor lifestyle choices, for a week. Just one week. But that’s already enough to teach me a lesson. I thought I had left that path a year ago, but it seems I still had one foot on it. There’s still remnants of those old habits, ever ready to rear their ugly heads if I get slack or distracted for a moment. 

There’s also a feeling that this is all a bad cosmic joke - as I’m enthusiastically moving into a new season of life with a meticulously planned out strategy - one final test appears. One final test to see if I really have the conviction to leave the old way behind and embrace this better, balanced and more wholesome way of working and living. 

OK body, you got my attention. I surrender. Totally.

I should have known better, really. It’s clearer to see now, because my priorities have changed, and when I couldn’t live according to those priorities for that last week, I should have done something about it there and then. Or I should have turned it down, knowing beforehand that a work trip of that nature would bring me down old habitual patterns. As you can see, I’m awfully fond of self-admonishment, but it’s required this time round, because I now find myself asking this important question, 

“Are you going to start anew for real or not?” 

Even while I nurse my body back to health now, my conviction roars:

“Go. And. Never. Look. Back.”