I Had a Cold!

C.S. Lewis, in The Screwtape Letters, mentions how a brooding melancholic forgets his depression five minutes into a really bad tooth-ache--in other words, we forget our former pain once we are experiencing real pain.

That was on my mind earlier this week while I was in the middle of my nastiest cold in years--my head was pounding so all I wanted to do was lay down and sleep, but my nose was constantly running and I had a hacking cough preventing me from getting comfortable enough to relax. I couldn't read, I couldn't surf the web, and I couldn't watch TV. I was bona fide miserable.

During that stretch, I wasn't pondering the uncertainty of the future, or the status of my friendships or romantic frustrations, I wasn't wondering if people liked me or my career path or the difficulty of getting into good PhD programs or my writing samples or the indifference of the Universe--no, I was wondering when the heck this cold would end. The end.

The cold had an ironic re-prioritizing effect--for despite the cold being mostly over now, this morning I just enjoyed the sunrise. I told some freshman about Nietzsche and false-binaries. And I wondered what I'd eat for breakfast. And little else. And I felt fine.

Cause that's another thing C.S. Lewis said--the melancholic likewise forgets his depression five minutes into a pleasant walk outside.