Happy New Year all! I greeted the New Year accompanied by a nasty flu bug that had its way with me for several days. Ordinarily, I would not think this would be worth a tweet let alone a blog post. Yet, during this period I had a chance once again to reflect on why it is that I have taken to “befriending” illness.

Sickness, illness, accidents and other untoward events belong to a category of experiences I call puncta—a term I borrow from Roland Barthes use of it in relation to photography. I use this word in reference to anything that punctures the ordinary flow of conscious intentionality. In this regard, dreams, visions, synchronistic events and numinous experiences are also puncta. Puncta of various kinds have different effects but all share certain things in common. One of the first things to notice is that puncta disrupt the smooth flow of time. To use my flu as an example, time disruption was initially related to having to cancel clients, change schedules, do all sorts of rearranging of plans all leading to a kind of “time out.” But as the flu deepened, my very consciousness of time was changed. I went in and out of fog-like states, not knowing what time it was, or even the day; or whether it was night. A second thing to notice is that all aspects of conscious intention are disrupted. I was not “up” and about my business, I was “down” with the flu. A third thing to notice is that the barrier between consciousness and the unconscious becomes more porous. One begins to experience all manner of strange things. Odd body sensations. Hallucination-like experience of things seen, heard, felt. Odd qualities to dreams and a strange “expansion” of the space between conscious and unconscious.

In my experience, puncta are important because they often are messengers of or pathways to something “new.” This new also relates to the future, in the sense that the new acts similar to a seed that, if planted, becomes something that grows. So, as I argue that all dreams have to do with the future (in Dreams, Bones & the Future), illness as punctum is similarly related to the future. Of course, always carried along at the lower frequency of an illness or any sickness is the presence of death-as-future. This is why sickness and illness always has the capacity to deepen one’s experience in unexpected and unanimated and, in particular, in unintended ways.

I befriend illness because I now tend to befriend puncta of all kinds as I experience in the seedbed of these unintended experiences something I didn’t know, something new I can make manifest and something of importance to my future. Like a dream unattended, one simply goes on one’s intentional way, and this may be ego-satisfying, but ultimately it does not lead one to one’s deeper purpose. The purpose of this post was just to hint at the possibilities when one turns a friendly face to difficulties presented by sickness, illness and other such puncta.

One other point. A recent study of US Patents revealed that almost 50% of patents are for “serendipitous” discoveries, inventions, methods, etc. Serendipity is another characterization of puncta that break through conscious intention and, if attended to, lead to something extraordinary. It’s that “if attended to” that is so crucial and what is so important about befriending puncta of all sorts.