--It always amazes me when I find one of my friends in the doldrums and thinking negatively. Spiraling their assetts and attributes into an ever diminishing depression of - woe is me. On 4th June 1971, I was run over by a drunk driver who managed to push my body along the bitumen for fifty-five metres under the sump. Needless to say I knew very little of this at the time, but awoke in an oxygen tent, happily off my tree on morphine.
--Playing cards continuously with Mum while they attempted to keep me awake for hours I had a little time to appreciate how geared up and well organized ER rooms are for all sorts of emergencies. And so I set my attitude to one looking at an end result of having healed and suffered no crippling, but being fit and healthy. Focusing backward to the trauma wasn't going to help much but get me angry and analytical of Drunk drivers, publicans that lie, and village policemen that follow politics rather that law. So, letting my parents deal with that past, I purposed to get through the immediacy of pain and achieve a better fitness for when the surgeons let me out of the restrictions of bed, plaster, steel pins, and strings on pulleys.
--Happy as only morphine can make you, floating up near the ceiling, I viewed the healing job as an easy exercise, the hardest part of which I thought would be patience to lie abed. I didn't know then the pain of constipation after weeks of drugs. I didn't know the pain of standing up after weeks of laying down. But like the pain of sudden bone-breaking, it was I found, possible to slip sort of sideways, and observe one's own body and it's pain as separate from the me that observed. Pain is a nerve message that pinpoints a trauma of pressure or piercing so one knows where upon one's body one is injured. Forty-six bones broken at once left me with every reason to not move suddenly or without forethought, and although one does not have command over the body's twinges and messages, one learns a command over how one responds to said pains. Some pains become almost welcome, for their telling you the amount of pressure applied and eventually their lessening lessens the intake of morphine. When the surgeons considered I was enough knit, they cut the morphine cold turkey, and a whole new level of pain arrived to teach me better control of responses. I was a teenager at the time so it was not long before I was throwing black grapes at Sister's starched whites. The orthopedic ward was a great learning curve. I was a teenager among adults from all walks of life. All immobilized but one or two in wheelchairs as they readjusted and learned balance on crutches, we were none of us ill, just broken. My chess and draughts improved tremendously, and I learned to play euchre. My main learning however was given over to contemplation. Meditative techniques I practiced and learned there, stood me in good stead at all subsequent dealings with hospitalization.
--And there in that orthopedic ward I first practiced daily a routine I've found the practicing of very useful ever since. Namely the repetition and inner dialogue of affirmations.
--I have explained elsewhere why I use 'You are' rather than the usual 'I am', but it was in that state of being strung on strings and pulleys from a ceiling frame that I first started an inner dialogue of positive affirmations of an end result, the which I achieved, joining the military within three years.
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--''Abundance is boundless. You are marvellous. You are utterly charming, warm, radiant and magnetic. You feel wonderfully self-confident and happy. You radiate irresistible power and magnetism. Good luck and fortune are being constantly attracted to you. You have profound understanding and inner wisdom. You feel wonderfully carefree, young and happy. You are excitingly beautiful and magnetic. You radiate a wonderfully strong, magnetic personality. You feel tremendous energy surging within. You feel terrific. Your body has an iron will resistance against all colds and infections. You are surrounded by a huge circle of protection day and night. You put your whole heart and soul into every repetition. You concentrate totally and completely on every repetition. You have incredible powers of endurance, concentration and determination. You are of immense value. You are of infinite value. You have the power to heal others and see into the future. Your Liver is strong, robust, and healthy. You concentrate totally and completely on the subject in hand. You are filled with peace and calm before going 'on stage'. You are always calm and patient. You feel wonderfully peaceful and relaxed. You find great joy and happiness within yourself. You are happy, relaxed and carefree. You are wonderfully safe and secure. Every organ in your body is dynamically strong, healthy and vigorous. You are deeply happy, relaxed and serene.''
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--''A torn jacket is soon mended, but harsh words bruise the heart of a child.''
< H.W.Longfellow. >
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''Diligence Alone Is A Good Patrimony.''