Some Good Thinking, done on a Bad Back.

I threw my back out on Thursday. If it didn’t hurt so much, I would be proud to have one of the top 5 sitcom-related injuries, and would be looking forward to 22-25 minutes of quirky hi-jinks. But since my life isn’t produced by Warner Bros. Television, I’m left to sit still and type very, very slowly.

This kink is stress. All of it. I didn’t try to fix a gutter or lift something heavy. I just worried about how some ideas would be received in a meeting, and the worry found a nice little nook in the lower right side of my back. My reckless imagination reports that it has morphed into a rage-filled chipmunk, delivering a series of unending, Miyagi-level kicks to my hip and every strand of tissue around it. According to nearby pain receptors, the scene is way less adorable than it sounds.

And as it turned out, all of this was completely unnecessary; the boss loved what I had and was happy to incorporate it into the project. Perhaps if I assumed a win instead of a war, I could celebrate in a more upright position. Instead, I lay on my laurels in a body-knot.

We all have this kind of mind power. It shows up in that rumbling stomach before the first day of school. The beads of sweat that a bully draws from our skin. The stammer that preludes that big question. It’s all the mind’s last ditch effort to protect you from change – you know, that thing that keeps happening to us, over and over again, no matter what we do.

We use a lot of energy to parry the bolts of change, because we fear the destruction that it can bring to our present. But, we choose to be struck by love, or blown away by great art. You don’t dodge your way into an amazing idea. You stumble.

Take the hit. There is beauty to be found in the rubble.