My friend mentions that when she wasn’t feeling well last week that, even when well again, it took three days to feel like herself again.
“It takes three days,” she says again.
(I actually remember a nurse telling me that once. She said that the first day I begin to feel better means I should still rest. I should give it time. Take another day after that day, and then maybe another. One should wait a few days before reentering life. Apparently, you can easily run yourself ragged if you emerge from illness too quickly.)
When I tell my friend I felt under the weather today, she said again, “You’ll be yourself in three days.”
Three days? That’s a lifetime!
I tend to want to bounce back immediately after a day of feeling fatigued or having a headache or congestion. And especially if I’ve had a less-than-happy mood, I’m so discouraged if I don’t pop out of bed the next day as the refreshed, full-version me.
But I think of the three day standard for returning to normal. Perhaps you need one day to cleanse out all the toxic things, one day to replenish, and one day to reset all the systems–whether physical, emotional, or spiritual.
I like this idea. I like thinking about taking three days to rehabilitate before launching full force back into life. Living with flair means you give yourself time to feel like yourself again. It won’t be tomorrow or the next day. But the next day? Yes!
I realize that the arbitrary assignment of three days doesn’t work for longer illnesses (like the time I had the norovirus and felt ill for two weeks and then not fully recovered internally for two months), but the idea of things taking time makes sense. We don’t rush healing. We don’t rush whatever we need to do to replenish and reset.
It might take three days or three months. The important principle I’m learning is that it won’t be tomorrow. We give things time.