I’ve been slowly exploring my thoughts around the differences and interchangeability of my vs. the (the determiner) in describing my damaged appendage. I noticed I’ve been using the possessive/subjective somewhat freely (yet always on purpose).

At the risk of getting too grammar-geeky for a minute… The possessive adjective (my) indicates ownership. When we are healthy, I think all of us normally assume ownership of our bodies and parts:

“I have something in my eye.”

“I pressed my finger.”

“I scratched my skin.”

“I’m getting my hair cut.”

I feel like, following my (the?) injury, I’ve had a mild urge to want to speak subjectively about that part of me.

“The leg is doing better.”

“There is swelling in the knee.”

“Pain continues under the kneecap.”

Maybe it’s just playing doctor – it sounds more serious to objectify the thing rather than making it mine. Or, it could be a way of separating myself from it, protecting my vulnerable spirit or psyche. As a Redditer succinctly described, disowning part of one’s self can be a behavioural coping mechanism – “a way to distance yourself from the pain, illness, or limitation by externalizing it, making it easier to manage the emotional and physical burden.”

And this is where my thoughts started to coalesce.

I sure was in a funk yesterday. As I wrote in my last post, I felt trapped. I felt stuck. I felt like there was nothing I could do to alleviate pain, boredom, malaise, frustration, sadness.

It is very easy to objectify all of this. There are profound moments when I look down and realize the extent of this injury and immobility. How does one ‘own’ a leg that doesn’t work properly or barely at all? How does one ‘own’ a part whose nerves were cut and there is no feeling in them?

As a result of the incision cutting through nerves, there is a 2”x 6” patch of skin on the right side of my knee with no feeling in it. Running my fingers over it, it doesn’t feel real. It feels like a baseball. It’s the same size and shape. It’s firm and round, due to swelling. No suppleness, softness or variation. It is even a bit leathery. So why wouldn’t I call this weird thing “the”. This isn’t a part of me.

And yet it is.

A brief conversation between my wife and I last night suddenly triggered a light bulb moment over the concept of agency. A consistent theme in all the times I’ve felt stuck so far, is that I’ve felt like a recipient. A victim. Like something’s happened to me, or been done to me, or affected me and there’s nothing I can do about it. The emotions and hormones that circulate as a result have stimulated all the negative feelings I mentioned, up to and including depression.

But what if I refuse those thoughts and take ownership? Claim agency? This is my knee. My injury. My situation. My decision how I feel, and my choice what I want to do about it. What if I evolve my thinking from passive to active, from bystander to participant, from victim to owner? Flipping the narrative stimulates a whole different cocktail of energizing molecules and smartens me up immediately.

My wife, bless her, has been persistently nudging a book towards me for several weeks now, since the injury: The Healing Power of Resilience, by Tara Narula MD.

(As an aside, I’ve barely had any interest in reading lately, save for some occasional muddling through Emily Wilson’s translation of The Odyssey, which I’d like to finish before Christopher Nolan’s movie comes out in July.)

The Resilience book has sat motionless on my bedside table for a few weeks now. Instead, I found a podcast interview between the author and Dan Harris, where the sum parts were discussed. It fit the bill and I got the gist.

Narula describes the following ‘ingredients’ to resilience in overcoming adversity (including major health events):

Accept your current situation; Embrace flexible thinking; Get fit; Face your fear; Build connections (relationships).

And so on… What do these all have in common? Agency.

When I’ve been upbeat during this period, it’s because I’ve felt agency and some degree of control over what’s going on. When I lose that feeling, the bottom falls out. So I’m not going to take a back seat to any of this any more. My snap-to-attention reminder to myself will be agency. Let’s see how that goes.