Don't Despair: Care to Repair
A meditation on injuries, repair and resilience
Repair: "To restore to a sound or good state after decay, injury, dilapidation, or partial destruction; to renew; to restore; to mend."
I repaired my hand from an injury last year. It took several months to fully recover. I am referring to the hand that was typing this while I lifted a mug of coffee to my lips with the other. The injury led me to meditate on the very natural, though unconscious, act of repair and what it can do from a bigger view.
On a fine day in June, I woke up on the plane unable to fully move my left hand. It was stuck in a shape reminiscent of a bird's beak. I had landed in Manila from Palawan towards the end of my regional adventures. As I disembarked, I felt little mobility or sensation from my wrist to my fingertips. My fingers wouldn't cooperate with my commands either as I tried to wiggle them at the baggage claim. It was my dominant hand too, so you can imagine my panic. My mind went straight to thinking: "Am I having a stroke?" I filmed the discovery of this disability so that in the event my condition worsened, I would have footage of it from the start. Eventually, I grounded and eased into my body: No need to panic. You don't know what's going on and you are still able to breathe as you evaluate the situation. I slowed my breathing and logically came to hypothesise that all the travel, plus having fallen asleep in a weird position on the plane, and my irregular sleeping habits and exercise at the time, caused strain to my body.
I verified this with a call with a doctor the following day. There was another layer to this story. While in Manila, I had been staying at a friend's apartment that had a lot of exercise equipment around. When I shared this with friends, someone challenged me to try to work up to one pull-up. My competitive side took over and I used the equipment, i.e. pull-up bars, weights—with little research and without much, or any, stretching. Terrible, now that I think of it. And egotistical. The victory and renown to carry out a pull-up clouded my judgment. I discarded my mindfulness practice for external validation. I was not doing a lot of vigorous exercise or movement in those months so I had forgotten the golden rule we all learned in P.E. of warming up and stretching before exercise. Within a short amount of time, I forced my body to carry out repetitive strenuous tasks. I acted competitively instead of taking a step back to assess the situation from a place of calm.
A couple of days with my injury and a darker thought came to me: What if I could never move my left hand normally again? Never ever. I felt the terror, but I allowed it to pass. Naming the fear and being able to discern it as such, is essential to how I practice mindfulness. On the other hand, injury aside, I could go about most of my day fine. There were slight improvements as days passed. I focused on these and accepted that if I consciously made efforts to rehabilitate my hand, things would turn out okay, even if not a hundred per cent. I read about my condition—a pinched nerve—and gave myself a timeline that if nothing improved, I would seek further professional help. I began to rehabilitate my hand on my own. I kept at writing and using it as much as I could without hurting it. I shuffled playing cards. I stretched more frequently. I watched so many videos about the role of stretching in exercise and learned how fascinating the fascia is. Thankfully, within a couple of weeks or so, I could feel my body mending itself.
Repairing what we have
Reparation is not very popular in our culture. The reparation that could mend communities and help humanity begin again, is an exception rather than the rule. We are drowning in media that encourage acquisition instead of repair. We often hear the saying: If it ain't broke, don't fix it. But also, if something is broken nobody is encouraged to repair what's been damaged. In spite of the rise of movements like rewilding nature, humans seem to have become out-of-touch from the very natural occurrence of repair. Repair is built into nature. Not just in human bodies, but in plants and other animals, as well as our ecosystems. Nature is built to be resilient. We forget this, so instead of taking care of things fully until their natural end, we halfheartedly enjoy them in anticipation of the new or next best thing.
Where to repair
I encourage repair. Here are my recommendations, of places and people who encourage repair or renewal in Singapore for various items:
Luggage wheels and handles
Headphones
Shoes and bags
Alice Wong Shoe Cobbler & Bag Repairs
78 Moh Guan Terrace,
#01-35, Singapore 162078
Clothes
Teh @ Man & Ladies Alteration
Blk 335 #01-143 / #01 144
Smith Street Market / Food Centre
HP: 9816 5072
Do-It-Yourself
You can also learn to sew and do things yourself. I signed up for a class amidst the pandemic, with local textile artist, Agy. I felt a bit more empowered in case Teh wasn't available to help me with alterations. You could also head to your nearest hobby store and learn about the many kinds of adhesives that exist. There are so many. It's mind-boggling.
We take our bodies for granted. We take many things for granted. I know this deeply because I still have a storage room full of stuff, which I haven't finished sorting since I last mentioned it in a post (I am working on it). Repair is built into every living being. I have learned to extend myself to match this ability with awareness so that I can overcome states of decay I have found myself in—physical/mental/emotional states—which have kept me in despair and disrepair.
I sit here grateful for my body and with a faith that collective repair too, is possible.