 After I'd been sick for a very long time, one of the first acupuncturicide scene gave me a slap in the face when he said, Alex, your illness is a gift. Now, I did not understand what he meant at the time and frankly, I didn't really want to hear it because I'd been sick for so long that I didn't want an illness or any symptoms anymore. But what he meant was that each illness, each symptom is a canary in the coal mine signaling that something is out of balance in your life. Something has gone wrong. Something has been overlooked. There's still a problem. There's a fire in the kitchen and you're not paying attention to it. Every illness is a gift. And I see this especially with my patients that have cancer who say that if they have the right mindset, cancer was the best thing that ever happened to them because they went after those passions. They rekindled those friendships. They ended those marriages that should have been over and they rebuilt that dream life and went after the dream they'd been wanting to go after since they were a child. And so if you listen to your illness and your symptoms as a gift that they are, it can lead you to the permanent healing that you're looking for.