What I Learn From My Migraines

A couple of weeks ago I had a migraine that lasted for about eight days. I pretty much could not get out of bed or accomplish anything even remotely productive, except sit and wait for the pain to abate. Over the past five years, migraines have become a constant part of my life, although I generally have them under control as a result of proper medication and diet. But it was about five years ago, when I was in my second year of rabbinical school, that these horrible migraines changed my life for the better.

I still dread these painful headaches that make me feel like someone is squeezing the daylights out of my cranium. Yet, it was five years ago when my suffering helped transform me from a “somewhat” cocky former tennis player with a healthy ego to someone who was starting to understand a few things in a different light. First and foremost, I learned how valuable our health is and how we so often take it for granted until something happens to make us realize that our health, and that of our friends and family, is truly the only important thing in life. It took my migraines to realize that everything else I have in life is gravy!

I also learned that no matter how well things are going for me, my life is devoid of meaning without the relationships I have with others. When I was too sick to walk and my wife carried me to the emergency room, I knew that a sense of divinity was present. When I was in the hospital in excruciating pain, I learned to be thankful not only for my friends and family who cared for me and enabled my success in life, but also for the gifts of modern medicine. When the pain finally did abate after 35 days of unrelenting migraines, I knew that divinity was present. My doctors, my family, and everyone else who cared for me taught me that without the relationships I have with others, there really is no point in my being. Ultimately what I learned was that doing for others and having others do for me is a lot more satisfying than doing for myself!

Finally, what I learned from this painful episode in my life is that we all need to inject an aspect of compassion into our own lives. How often do we think about others before ourselves? I am so thankful that I was able to learn from these migraines that I needed to be a much softer and more compassionate individual before I became a rabbi. Those of us who have been sick (and that is almost all of us) know what it is like to need to be cared for. And so we should naturally infer that at all times there is someone in our community in need of caring and compassion, and it is our job to be there for them like we would hope they would be there for us.

L’Shalom,
Jeremy Barras