My recent knee surgery had a goal, at least in my mind. It was pretty straight-forward: to be able to run again, pain-free.
I have learned that the surgeon apparently had to take out about 70% of my meniscus to achieve the goal (the pain-free part, at least). This leaves me with an inevitability—to run regularly again will only increase my chances of more significant knee problems. In other words, no more regular running.
Devastation...is over-stating things a bit. But, I am disappointed.
I've talked about disappointment before; but, this time, it is registering a bit more deeply with me.
You see, I love to run. I think it has been one of my greatest sources of overall health. Not just physically; it has also been one of my greatest therapies.
I am now imagining a world where fixing something (like surgery) is not possible—where living with less of something that I really want is perpetual. I am tempted to think that this is more than simple disappointment.
But, in reality, that appeal to something more dramatic is probably just evidence of my sense of privilege—that most anything that isn't right, can be fixed or solved. But, what if it can't? Many people (and whole people groups) live with a lot of things that are way more disappointing than this—and with a perpetual sense that they will never have the something they really want, ever....
I can go a number of directions with this feeling. But, the main one for me right now is to allow myself to just be disappointed. To be fully present to it—not to get away from it or to re-position it, to feel victimized by it, etc.
This willingness, I suspect, is able to provide me with the capacity to experience something I otherwise would miss (in my rush to find other remedies). Perhaps it is a means of knowing something I would not know, an experience of something that others experience that I know too little about, an awareness of something otherwise too long undetected. And, perhaps it is a means of reconnecting me to something.
I don't like being disappointed. But, I need to be able to be.
