Allergies

I have always enjoyed Autumn for its weather and wonderful colors here in New England. As I have grown older, I have developed an allergy to leaf mold. Fungi consume dead leaves. They release their spores into the air as a form of reproduction. When those spores get into my sinuses, I sneeze, get a headache and generally feel like a have a mild cold. Each year it is the same.

 

I still sweep leaves around my house from the driveway into the yard to compost. I saw a young man sweeping leaves from a gutter the other day. He was wearing a surgical mask. My heart went out to him, but I realized he would  have to wear that mask all the time to escape leaf mold in Boston in October. It is simply in all the air we breathe.

 

Adapting to these changes in life is another way of becoming at peace with Nature and with my own state as an animal on a planet which hosts a wide diversity of life, no better or worse than my own. Modern medicine tends to couch this as a battle rather than an adaptation. I think this is a grave mistake. Militarizing against a natural process within my own body is self-destructive, yet that process is at the core of medical treatments for diseases from allergies to cancer.

 

I am not a Luddite. I am alive today thanks to modern pharmaceuticals and radiation therapy. However, I have tried to be compassionate toward my own body with its failings and weaknesses. When I was suffering from the side effects of chemotherapy and radiation, I tried to summon acceptance of my body's frailty, as opposed to raging against its weakness. I believe this facilitated my remission and eventual recovery from the traumas of treatment.

 

My humanism is founded on clearly looking at and accepting my life as it is. This is how I coped with coming from a family plagued with denied and untreated mental illness. This is how I coped with being homosexual in a violently homophobic society. This is how I coped with being a male nurse in a sexist society. This is how I coped with being infected with HIV in 1984 by someone I deeply loved. This is how I coped with having cancer. This is how I cope with simply growing older.

 

I can smile as well as sniffle with my allergies. I am alive. I can function. And, when the time comes when I cannot function, I will accept that as well. This is part of my practice as a humanist and a person who assumes responsibility for my own happiness and well being. So much of a truly peaceful and joyful life is simply accepting life as it is and making the best of it.