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Body and daily life

Shi Tiesheng

Illness is the job, writing the sideline

Shi Tiesheng (1951–2010 · Beijing) — Illness is the job, writing the sideline.

Body and daily lifeModernIllness is the job, writing the sideline

What actually happened?

After the paralysis he went to the park every day and told his mother nothing about it. She was afraid to stop him and more afraid of what he might do, so she took to coming after him: walking the paths among the old trees looking for him, not calling out, and going home once she had seen him. He noticed this only years later. She died at forty-nine while he was still in his twenties, and what he wrote afterwards was that a son's misfortune is always doubled in his mother.

Some questions are closed, not answered

Why me has no answer and needs none, because it is only a fact. It took him years to concede that this one is not solved but crossed off the list. Once it is crossed off, the strength goes to questions that have answers.

Stop asking why me and ask what now, given that it is me.

Put the illness first so the rest of the time can work

Dialysis three times a week, four hours each. Anyone who will not admit the illness is the main job spends the day competing with it for time, loses, and spends what is left in resentment. He reversed it: give the illness its hours first, and what remains is genuinely yours.

Fix treatment and rest into the calendar first. What is left is my time. Do not do the arithmetic the other way round.

One place you go back to every day

Fifteen years in the same park, and what he stresses is the daily part. A person who has come apart needs one coordinate that does not move. It solves nothing at all, and it is there every day, and that turns out to be enough. Rally too early and the feeling returns for a second collapse.

Just after it happens, having one place you go to matters more than planning the next step.

How do I use it today?

If something has happened that cannot be undone, take why me off the list rather than trying to solve it, and find one place you can go back to every day. If you are carrying a long illness, stop competing with it for hours: give it what it needs first, then ask what the smallest thing is that the remaining hours can hold, and do that one thing properly.

Deep read

Once Born, No Longer Open to DebateThe Temple of Earth and ITake why me off the list before anything elseBeing Ill Is the Job; Writing Is the SidelinePut the illness in first positionStop competing with the illness for time and divide it insteadDeath Is a Festival That Will Certainly ArriveNothing to hurry towardThink it through once, and the days left are yours

Read alongside

Arthur KleinmanOne is a doctor writing about patients, the other is the patient: Kleinman argues that what the clinician sees and what the patient lives are two things, and Shi Tiesheng is the one living the second. Viktor FranklBoth answer what holds when a situation leaves no choice: Frankl says meaning, Shi Tiesheng answers much smaller, with one place he went every day and the gaps between dialysis sessions.

Further

Arthur Kleinman Viktor Frankl Su Shi Montaigne

Lines to keep

He never made peace with fate. He only stopped arguing with why me.

The park solved nothing, and it was there every day.

Put death back in its place and the days have room again.