Disease used to mean without ease. Surely, you have heard speakers who made you feel uneasy or worse, the dis-ease came from you speaking.  The sick feeling in your stomach doesn’t have to be acute or chronic, in fact it is a gift.  Okay, so the wrapping paper isn’t pretty, the box is bashed and dented and the bow holding it all together looks more like a hangman’s noose, but what is inside will transform you.  The gift of disease teaches you to value your health, deepens your compassion and separates suffering from pain.

Your life is wrapped in pain. Pain is a constant and common experience for us all.  Suffering is the denial of this fact and only gets worse the more you tell yourself you don’t deserve to feel pain.  You may admire speakers who present with ease, and think I wish I could be like them.  What remains invisible to you is the internal struggle to discipline the butterflies battling in their stomach.  You will feel nervous nausea when you stand to speak. How you interpret this feeling determines whether you will suffer or succeed.  Successful speakers know this sensation means they are going to give a great presentation.  Sickly speakers struggle to suppress their feelings, and end up communicating their emotional conflict.  Lack of compassion for your feeling forces your listeners to suffer with you.

You will be bashed and dented but will you suffer?  Compassion sublimates suffering.  Compassion transforms pain into something worth sharing.  Compassion is the emotional quality which lets your audience know you understand how they feel.  This connection does not deny the pain disease causes in the body and the mind; it simply puts it in a wider context.  This perspective allows your audience to explore a large truth, seeing more of themselves through you, and finding more of themselves in others.  When you have the courage to call out the common pain we share, the dark power of denying disease is dispelled.    What you feel is what is real for you. Compassionately conveying your reality helps your listeners appreciate healthy communication.

What would health mean if there was no disease?  Through contrasting experiences you learn appreciation.  Intellectual appreciation is a poor substitute for emotional experience.  Studying disease is a world away from being sick.  This is why facts and figures, procedures and processes, morals and morality come to life only through stories. Stories provide a space to share emotional understanding.  You are the story you tell yourself.  A part of your story is all your listeners will ever hear.  Give them a dose of the diseases which choked you and show how you caught your breath.  When you appreciate your health regardless of what level it is, you remind yourself of its value and you embody this value for others.

Through compassion for yourself you can experience crushing pain without suffering and appreciate your current state of health.  Compassion creates a bond of understanding with your listeners.  Acknowledging pain, separate from the suffering, strengthens this bond and opens a space of grace to appreciate the gifts of disease.  Strive to present your listeners with the gifts of your disease so they can see the pain in their lives with compassionate ease.