"I like to say to people, "from our point of view, as long as you’re breathing, there is more right with you than wrong with you, no matter what’s wrong with you."
Jon Kabat-Zinn
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The ill are not ill alone. They are healthy, too. Indeed they are also healing us, in my view. They give us chances to discover and practice love. Is that not important to remember?
When I read Jon Kabat-Zinn´s book "Full Catastrophe Living" a few years ago, I was so glad with his approach to sicknesss and health. He wrote a paradigm change happens regarding this subject and I experience it, too. Thank One
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One morning Ernstl streched out his hand and I reached for it. But he did not want me to hold his hand. He only liked to touch palms, very quickly and this a few times. It became a ritual with which he could make me happy. I think, deep down he knows that. Ernstl is diagnosed as autistic and deaf-mute.
Mr. B. always gives me his two hands as welcome. We box into the air together and this makes us laugh. He loves to sing. He has no problems with wording of sentences he knows with sound. We often sing, but not too loud. He is very sensitive to the moods of people who are with him. He reflects their moods. When his often sad relative is near, then he is also sad. When I am with him and I just feel good, then he immediately responds to the energy with brightness in his face. He learns to walk again after a stroke. He truly rejoices in every step. His speech center functions not the way we were used to and his thinking process is changed.
With Hilda I always sing the same christmas song. Only the refrain, again and again, in july, too. Other songs I am singing she sometimes likes to listen to, but she does not sing other songs as far as I know. She is a person who currently screams a lot like an unsatisfied baby. Many do not like to be with her, not even her family. She spends most of the time being alone. When I am looking forward to see her, when I am looking forward to hear her singing, a kind of whispering singing, then it is a day I am able to be fully present with her and feel positively moved by her being the way she is. She screams not. She just demands full presence, full attention. She knows exactly what she wants and what she does not want. When she gets what she wants, she is content. I feel content, when I am able to make her feel content.
It´s not always singing...but singing is a great tool, I figured. Sometimes it´s taking the time to enjoy the little breakfast someone loves to prepare for you. Sometimes it´s a regular farewell-waving at the window, for which you have to wait a minute or two...little things. "Little things? There are no little things!"
DInoma
