While former injecting drug users praise beneficial aspects of being infected, many gay men dissent. Disease can raise or lower social status. Although the lives of both gay men and drug users have often improved, differences clearly remain. Many gay men had struggled hard for decades in difficult fields, building careers that now must be abandoned. Yet even many of these men readily cite lessons they have learned, the grace and wisdom they have attained, and the appreciation of aspects of life they have previously overlooked.
Nature offers consolation and larger order.
Though gardening design is very long term, the actual practice of horticulture is very immediate, with concrete physical progress that's very helpful. In the meantime, my mind can go off and think about anything it wants. Gardening is also useful in thinking about HIV because making and keeping a garden is about orchestrating death and dying. All plants have a life span. Annuals are purely seasonal, but perennials die at different rates.