Being human is perfectly alright

As I go through each day with constant to-do lists in my head, I fail to realise that I take my body for granted. I am up early doing everything from cooking, dealing with the kids, working on projects, running errands and all the other thousand little things that need to be done when a house, family and a career need to be balanced. Most of my time is accounted for (not forgetting my mandatory reading hours), but I forget to include that there will be days when I simply cannot do everything I want to.

For me those days mostly happen when I fall ill. These are rare occasions because as everyone knows, the lady of the house almost never has that luxury. The only times when I really am helpless is when my fickle back betrays me. The last few days saw me struggling with a very non-cooperative lower back. As usual, it was just me and the kids.

Why is it that when you simply cannot bend, nearly every single thing seems to fall out of your hand and land on the floor? The children also went overboard in leaving toys everywhere and I was beginning to get really irritated — both at myself for being held ransom by my perennially finicky back and at the kids for not helping me out enough.

I had to let everything be for a while. I was forced to step back and ignore the dust the maid never bothered to get to. I had to let the kids have their way. I had to attempt to stop working on my project even though a deadline was coming up. In short, I had to teach myself that the world would not crash to a grinding halt just because I wasn’t able to do my work for three days.

Sensibly indulging my lower back with a hot water bottle, I was eventually able to get back on my feet and to my schedule. The best thing about getting over something as mundane as a backache is how you feel so much better about everything else. I was now able to return to my morning and evening walks and run up and down the stairs keeping a tab on my noisy twosome. I even had an increased appetite and lighter spirits.

Sometimes the best you can do is give in to a situation that seems like a real pain but will probably end up being beneficial. It is certainly true of all the important things that happened to me but one never figures out that lessons could be learnt even from the little ups and downs of our mostly routine existence. More often than not, we exaggerate the importance of things we are responsible for and that tends to overwhelm us.

Perhaps we just need to realise that occasionally, just being human is perfectly alright.