On Being Ill

Her piece indicates that she preferred the former over the latter; in fact, while ill, she was greatly inspired creatively since there were no distractions or responsibilities in her way, and she could enjoy some of her favorite pastimes like reading books, or even simply staring at the sky.

[1] All of these thoughts were Woolf's attempts at answering one overarching question: why do literature and culture not have illness as one of their central themes, like love and battle?

[5] Her appreciation for the nothingness that being ill allows her to enjoy also shows her realization that this condition gives people the opportunity to be removed from the busyness of life and from the sense of belonging to society even if only for a second and perhaps start paying attention to the small details of the world that many times go by unnoticed.

In her eyes, what this ultimately does is that it gifts people with an almost mystic superpower to give a new meaning to things, as they are able to look beneath the surface and develop a completely new understanding of existence.

[5] Considering that throughout Woolf's lifetime she was at different points diagnosed with influenza, pneumonia, and depression, which caused countless nervous bouts and eventually led her to take her own life, she experienced all of these moments and feelings once and again, which explain her reverence for what illness does to whomever it strikes.

[1] Although the work was printed in multiple venues during Woolf's lifetime, it did not attract sustained critical attention until it was republished in 2002, at which point it experienced a resurgence of interest.