The other day I came across a single frame of a Snoopy comic.

Charlie Brown asks Snoopy, "What do you miss?"

Snoopy replies, "I miss the way I viewed the world before I knew too much about it."

Snoopy's reply hit me much harder than I expected.

There was a time when I didn't know so much. When answers weren't instantly available. When I wasn't constantly analysing my body or my thoughts. I miss that version of myself more than I realised.

I've always been fairly health-conscious, but a few years ago I got seriously ill. Ill enough that I thought I might die, and some days I did want to die. For eighteen months, my life was a mess. I had no clear answers, no certainty, just waiting. It's time I'll never get back.

During this time I learned far more about the human body than I ever wanted. I searched endlessly for answers online. I was convinced that if I read enough I could figure out what was wrong with me when the doctors couldn't.

Eventually I got better, not because I found the answer on the internet. But because I made changes that I had resisted for so long. Physically, I've recovered. Mentally, it's been a little slower. To say there's a little residual trauma is an understatement.

I still have a low level of health anxiety that has never left. An ache or a pain can pull me straight back to that period of uncertainty. I tell myself I'm safe now, but there's always that part of my brain that says "Yes, but what if?"

There's an idea that when something uncomfortable shows up, the only way out is through. You don't fight it. You move towards it, deal with it, and come out the other side better for it. The older I get, the more I think this applies to a lot of areas in life.

Annoyingly, life isn't one steady state. Everyone has good periods followed by bad. I understand now that you can't fully appreciate the highs without having lived through the lows.

So back to Snoopy. I really do miss the way I saw the world before I knew too much. Before I got ill and discovered how fragile things can be.

I can't go back to how things were. But I'm working on making things better.

And that's enough for now.