Member-only story
TOTALLY TRUE. NO AI USED.
I Gave a Man a Black Eye
And he thanked me for it
I wrote an article that got boosted about a Chinese proverb called the Horse/Man story.
There’s no need to look it up. I’ll summarise it for you: don’t label things as good or bad because you never know what the future holds. Things that seem good may turn out to be bad, and things that seem bad may turn out to be good.
When I was an acupuncturist, I would often tell the story to patients.
One of them was called. . .[REDACTED]. Let’s call him Vinny. He used to suffer from terrible hay fever and would visit me once a month or so in summer to keep it at bay.
One day, he asked me to needle a point on the side of his nose where there was no acupuncture point. He said it felt as if his qi was blocked in that exact spot and that needling it would bring him some relief.
It is not unheard of for acupuncturists to needle “ah shi” points, i.e. tender points that are not on meridians. I was taught that “ah shi” means “ooh yes, right there, that’s the spot”, in the way that if a massage therapist finds a tight knot, it hurts good when they work on it.
The spot Vinnie was indicating may well have been tender, but it was quite close to his eye.
