63 Days in the Valley of Darkness

Sixty-three days ago, I would probably have described myself as healthy.

I was going to the gym. I was eating well. I was running my businesses, working on our new home, making plans and thinking about the future.

Then things changed.

Over the next two months came three trips to hospital emergency rooms, hospital stays, more than ten cannulas within fifteen days, multiple injections, and countless sleepless nights. For more than half a month, much of my life happened on a bed, with very little movement.

There were nights when my heart rate stayed above 120 for hours, sometimes climbing to 140 or 160. There were days when simply standing or walking felt difficult.

Some days were lighter. Some were worse.

I began calling this period the Valley of Darkness.

Today is Day 63. I feel like I am finally reaching the edge of the valley. I am not completely out yet, but I have enough energy to sit here and shape these words.

So, on the 63rd day, I want to leave this note for my future self.

There are two things I don’t want to forget.

Remember Impermanence

I had known about impermanence for years.

It is one of the Buddhist ideas that has always made sense to me: everything changes.

But I don’t think I really knew it.

A day or two before all this began, I was living almost as though things were permanent.

My health felt permanent. My ability to move freely felt permanent. The business problems occupying my mind felt important and solid. Even my thoughts seemed serious enough to demand immediate attention.

Then, within days, my world became very small.

Sometimes getting out of bed was an achievement. Sometimes eating was an achievement. Some nights, my only concern was getting through the next few hours.

Change stopped being something I understood and became something I experienced.

I don’t know whether I will remember this when ordinary life returns. Maybe someday I will again become consumed by a meeting, a project, or something that feels terribly urgent.

That is partly why I am writing this.

Not because I have mastered impermanence. I haven’t.

I knew about impermanence before. These sixty-three days made me live through it. Now, when the healthy days return, I want to learn how to live without forgetting it.

It Is What It Is

There were moments when my heart was racing, the dizziness was severe, and I could do very little except surrender.

I would quietly repeat:

It is what it is.

At first, I tried to manage recovery the way I managed much of my life.

Follow the doctors’ instructions. Take the medicine. Eat correctly. Rest. Research. Understand the symptoms. Plan the next week.

If I did everything correctly today, I expected tomorrow to be better.

But recovery didn’t work that way.

A good morning could become a difficult afternoon. Something that worked yesterday might not work today.

Eventually, I became too tired to keep trying to control the path.

And I learned something uncomfortable:

I can do everything within my influence without controlling the outcome.

That didn’t mean doing nothing. There were still things within my hands.

But after that, something remained outside them.

The same thing seemed true beyond the hospital.

I could prepare carefully for a business decision and still get an unexpected result. I could have good intentions and still create a bad outcome. I could try to understand another person and still misunderstand them.

And once something has already happened, I noticed how easily I create another layer of suffering.

Why didn’t I know?

Why didn’t I do something differently?

How could a good intention lead to a bad result?

The event has already happened.

I can learn from it. I can decide what to do next. But I don’t have to keep fighting the fact that it happened.

It is what it is.

A Note to My Future Self

Nay, if you are reading this a year from now, I don’t know what kind of day you are having.

Maybe you are healthy, the businesses are doing well, the house is finished, and life is running so smoothly that these sixty-three days already feel distant.

If so, take a break and look around.

There is work, money, achievement and reputation.

But there is also love. Family. Friends. Warmth. Living. And, perhaps most importantly, simply being.

Remember these 63 Days in the Valley of Darkness—not to make a good day darker, but to remember the impermanence of it all.

And if something difficult has already happened, you don’t have to decide yet whether it is fortunate or unfortunate.

What has already happened, accept it as though you had chosen it.

It is what it is.

Written on Day 63, while still recovering.

Shaped from my audio journals with the help of an AI assistant.