Faith
Shhh. Sit down and listen. Can you hear it? That’s your heartbeat. The gentle rasp, that’s your respiratory system sending oxygen, fueling chemical reactions, good and bad, throughout your body. Hear the rumbling? That’s the result in your bowels, pushing out waste. Your body is talking to you. Will you listen in time?
I did not. Like many, I relied on my youth and my physique to make things happen. My body allowed it but quietly accumulated a toll. Now it has come to collect.
I am writing this as a warning. Don’t do what I did. It isn’t worth it.
Among my many infirmities: Two rotator cuff tears (repaired), several broken bones in each wrist (healed, but manifesting arthritis), an ACL tear (repaired but since failed), several meniscus tears (repaired, but since worsened, leading to bone-on-bone abrasion in my right knee), a gooseneck tear in my left ring finger (repaired), a break of my right radius head (repaired), a retina separation in my right eye (rather miraculously repaired), a repeatedly broken heart (repaired, though heavily scarred, but that’s another story). As a result of these and other insults to the body, I have arthritis in my knees, wrists, and in several vertebrae of my cervical spine. I currently have serious pain radiating down my back and right arm; I cannot extend my right index finger; and I am losing muscle mass in my hand and forearm.
To stop the decline I am going to have surgery soon to remove a slipping disk and replace it with titanium, fusing C7 to the surrounding vertebrae. It’s a common procedure but carries serious risks.
I have faith that all will be fine, that I will emerge renewed, if not better. However, faith is something independent of fact. As a student of religion and philosophy, I know that it occurs a priori. Facts don’t give a damn whether you believe them or not. But faith has its own power. It draws us forward despite overwhelming odds. It helps us heal.
That is my next assignment: To heal, so that I can return to making portraits, to photographing movement, to exploring my interaction with light and shadow and the penumbra between them, to love and to find meaning in this short life.
If all goes well, I should be back in action in 6-8 weeks. Wishing you a joyous holiday season, however you celebrate it.
All photos in this blog were made by me at Camp South 2022, an annual clinic through the American Judo & Jujitsu Federation. © 2022, by Dan Browning/Danzante Photography LLC.
