Living in Every Dimension

Do We Care For Ourselves

As We Really Are?

 

Time to get on my high horse—

We have really gotten the message about caring for ourselves physically.  Even if we don't do it--we have heard it.  The punch line is--the more we care for ourselves, the longer we will live.  The marketers sell everything by linking it to either to lower your chances of dread disease or to extend your life span. The new motto for the age--Live Longer. 

Look at the pie chart.  The new motto sees life only in physical terms--a level one, singular dimension.  Is it too much of a stretch to say we invest in one dimensional lives and living? What's your workout schedule?  How many supplements do you take?  Which diet for this year?  

I hear something vastly different from those with illness that threatens to cut life short.  They enter multi-dimensional life.  They become aware of their social, psychological and spiritual needs.  They stop asking about quantity of years. What about the quality of living each moment?  They care less about extending life and focus on what Buddhists call "mindfulness" for living.  You cannot live the past or tomorrow.  Only today.  Live it now!   Maybe that is another way of saying Carpe diem--seize the moment. Rudyard Kipling said it marvelously in his poem "IF."

If you can fill the unforgiving minute

With sixty seconds' worth of distance run -

Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,

Now, what about advocating for ourselves in the health care system?   Only you can make that happen.  We can raise for our physicians our full considerations and needs beyond the limited focus of cure.  Really?  Sure--it is the rare physician who knows that medicine was once referred to as "the cure of souls."  Now it is the body. 

Need enouragement?  Go on line and get The Washington Post, 10/20, B-2, “On Faith.”  It’s a new column and this one highlights the work of Christina Puchalski. Professor of Medicine at George Washington Medical School who writes on the integration of soul, spirit with health.  She calls it “whole person care.”  She teaches future physicians to ask the personal questions, the religious questions….because we don’t treat sickness, we treat people. (Thank you Patch Adams!).  Can we envision a time when we will visit physicians and their offices will include certified chaplains as a part of whole health treatment?

Don’t wait for it.  Do it yourself!  Advocate for your whole health needs.  We all easily shop for the whole health foods—what is the food that feeds the spirit, the soul-food that lasts?  All too often I find the discovery of patients who find themselves as far more than bodies to cure, but whole people for compassion.  We can only offer that ourselves in how we treat physical illness.You just may not want certain treatments because of what it does of your life.  Look at the diagram--whatever you do at the base of the pie chart effects the other dimensions. 

 I love the prayer that says, “Grant O Lord that this sickness may be an occasion for my faith in you.”  Can sickness, failing bodies, be the new vision of a spiritual life to see ourselves and others differently—and to renew life in profound ways?   I also love the prayer that bids that we might be “restored to wholeness in our lives.”  We need to say that prayer for ourselves and seek in total health care.

Do more than get on a high horse.
Ride it!