If you follow me on Twitter (yeah, right), then you know I’ve been sick the past couple days. I hate being sick. Not that many people enjoy sickness, but I hate it with a passion.

I take illness as a personal affront. I’ve spent so much of my life sick, particularly in my first 16 or 17 years, that I almost feel I should now be exempt, as if we’re each given a certain allotment of sick days, and I met my quota a couple of decades back. Any illness that comes near me now should be in violation of some cosmic law and subject to immediate extinction. Unfortunately, life doesn’t work that way.

These days, I probably don’t fall ill more often than the average person, maybe once or twice a year, but it still riles me. It brings up all those wasted years, all that I lost, all that I missed out on. It reminds me that I am still subject to all the faults inherent in this flesh, all that is “common to man,” and that even worse could still await me.

So, while I erroneously think past suffering should somehow exempt me from future suffering, I know that the only permanent escape from sickness is death, if death isn’t the ultimate permanent sickness, that is.