My Two-Cents: What Cannot Be Cured Must Be Endured
I read a book that was written by a hospital resident recently, and one chapter in particular stuck with me. Or rather, one quote I took a predilection to: What cannot be cured must be endured. After further research, I discovered that this adage dates back to 1621, as cited in Robert Burton’s The Anatomy of Melancholy. The phrase first applied to the ailments of the mind and body, but later echoed through the halls of medicine — yet its reach extends well beyond that aspect.
Many conditions, both medical and ordinary, resist tidy solutions. Searching for a cure for these is like picking cherries in the desert: a fruitless endeavor. The only real prescription is to endure. When no definitive treatment exists, the race itself becomes the remedy.
The transition between stages of life is one of these incurable conditions. The boundary waters between 18 and 23 serve as an arduous transition period from childhood to adulthood. And with the start of this period, we experience our first real rendition of growing up.
That feeling hit me hard and abruptly when I first moved out of my childhood home and started college. I've written about this feeling of maturing and trying to figure out where your feet should land multiple times before — (My Two Cents: Homelessness, The Price of Something New, Limbo (Not the Dance). But this post feels different. Now, I'm on the downhill side of this transition. And this is the first ever summer that I'm not going home for an extended visit. But oddly enough, I barely noticed that fact until the end of July. (Though my parents noticed. I often get texts from my dad that say, “I think I missed your call, Kate. Feel free to call. Letting it ring once doesn’t count.”) So what happened in this five year stretch?
Maturing and the soft sting of homesickness for a place that doesn’t exist anymore are prime examples of the incurable. The only relief to their subtle, persistent ache is to endure. To wake up in the morning and carry on until one day, you notice those same mental ailments and worries don’t cross your mind. Four years ago, this thought would have seemed foreign and nonsensical. I was looking for a solution to these aforementioned ailments/emotions: Would I ever feel ready to be an adult? What could make me feel ready? What’s the cure for uncertainty and fear of the unknown? Now I understand there was never a cure. What cannot be cured must be endured. The latter half is the only script the doctors behind the madness of this world will write.
Fear, uncertainty, and homesickness are just the tip of the emotional iceberg that makes up the human experience. We’re born incurable, expiration date attached. In case you weren't aware, no one makes it out alive! So we opt to endure. To feel it all: the good, the bad, the ugly. The whole nine yards of emotions and experiences, in bleeding, brilliant colors!
