Illness requires us to center the care of our bodies—to think and act in ways that defy the market. We slow down, rest, retreat from public life, attune to the needs of our body, nourish ourselves with intention, and rely on the care of our kin and community.
When we are sick, we cannot participate in the machinations of modern economic life. This is part of what makes illness so difficult—we are not just tasked with the work of healing our bodies, but also with surviving economically in a system that demands uninterrupted productivity. We are unable to make money and simultaneously, we are compelled to consumption, paying for the expense of medical care. It’s a terrible paradox that demonstrates American capitalism’s fundamental hostility to life.
Illness reveals where we have strayed: from our bodies, from nature, from each other.