The Normal Vicissitudes of Life
Good health is just as much a part of having a good attitude towards life as it is about having a physically fit body.
Indeed, health, as attitude, can even be defined as being successful in coping with pain, sickness, and death as a Normal Vicissitude of Life. Experiencing aches, pain, and sickness is a normal part of being alive. Normal human experiences are simply Mother Nature's way of reminding you that you are indeed still alive. The choice is yours. Learn to deal with common problems as a challenge, or hide from reality by turning to your doctor for help every time you face one of life's ordinary challenges.
Highlights of the Normal Vicissitudes of Life:
- You have a healthy Attitude only if you are of the opinion that the stress in your life comes from how you have chosen to react to the Normal Vicissitudes of Life, rather than directly from the ache, pain, or sickness; itself.
- Health, as Attitude, can be defined as being successful in coping with pain, sickness, and death as a Normal Vicissitude of Life.[3]
- Experiencing aches, pain, and sickness is a normal part of being alive.
As the saying goes, "Life is stress and stress is life". Throughout the ages people have been born, have died, and in between have lived in various stages of sickness or health. Experiencing aches, pain, and sickness is a normal part of being alive. Normal human experiences are simply Mother Nature's way of reminding you that you are indeed still alive.
- Don't you remember how getting cuts, scrapes, bruises and even a few broken bones were just a normal part of playing, as a child?
- So, why are we getting so upset over the aches and pains of everyday life?
- Do we prefer to dream of finding a "magic pill" that will shelter us from facing the reality of the aches and pains of everyday life?
- Is there a growing tendency in our Western Culture to medicalize problems that are not medical and to pretend to understand phenomena by merely giving them a label?
- Do we have more medical problems today, than we did 50 years ago, simply because of the ever expanding definition of what is considered a medical problem?
It may surprise you to learn that "no general agreement exists on how to define a disease."[1] The socially constructed nature of all illness and disease is well recognized among medical sociologists and psychologists. So, everyone must decide for themselves if what they are experiencing is just a normal part of life or a serious medical problem.
"If people are educated to believe they are fundamentally fragile, always on the verge of mortal disease, perpetually in need of health-care professionals at every side, always dependent on an imagined discipline of 'preventive' medicine, there can be no limit to the numbers of doctors' offices, clinics, and hospitals required to meet the demand. ...We are, in real life, a reasonably healthy people. Far from being ineptly put together, we are amazingly tough, durable organisms, full of health, ready for most contingencies. The new danger to our well-being, if we continue to listen to all the talk, is in becoming a nation of healthy hypochondriacs, living gingerly, worrying ourselves half to death."[2]
Good health is just as much a part of having a good attitude towards life as it is about having a physically fit body. Indeed, health, as Attitude, can even be defined as being successful in coping with pain, sickness, and death as a Normal Vicissitude of Life.[3]
"Death, pain, and sickness are part of being human. All cultures have developed means to help people cope with all three. Indeed, health can even be defined as being successful in coping with these realities. Modern medicine has unfortunately destroyed these cultural and individual capacities, launching instead an inhuman attempt to defeat death, pain, and sickness. It has sapped the will of the people to suffer reality. 'People are conditioned to get things rather than to do them ... They want to be taught, moved, treated, or guided rather than to learn, to heal, and to find their own way."[3]
| "You gotta work at living. Any stupid person can
die. Dying is easy. You've got to eat right, think right, train right.
Fitness is a full time job." -- Jack LaLanne |
The choice is yours. Learn to deal with common problems as a challenge, or hide from reality by turning to your doctor for help every time you face one of life's ordinary challenges. Healthy people choose to learn, to heal, and to find their own way through the Normal Vicissitudes of Life.
References:
- Smith R. In search of "non-disease". BMJ. 2002 Apr 13;324(7342):883-5. PMID: 11950739 [BMJ Online]
- Thomas L. The Medusa and the Snail, New York: Bantam, 1980.
- Moynihan R, Smith R. Too much medicine? BMJ. 2002 Apr 13;324(7342):859-60. PMID: 11950716 [BMJ Online]
