Health and Disease

Health is very difficult to define. Gregory Bateson pointed out that we struggle to talk about "health" in its essence, but find it much easier to talk about disease. Disease invites categorisation while health defies definition. The american psychotherapist Graham Barnes gave a wonderful talk about health at the 2012 ASC conference. He said the most powerful question to ask about health was "How loving is your world?". Graham's no longer alive, but that question stays with me. It is easy not to see our worlds as loving, and react badly to our perceived "unlovingness" of the world. 

There have been one or two traumas since I got back from China, and I am still lacking sleep and energy. But my world is loving. Many things that have happened this year have reinforced that and I am grateful for that reinforcement. It's far more loving than previous worlds I created for myself. Maybe it's my getting older. It's easy to let ambition, jealousy, anxiety lead us to construct an unloving world. That's a silly thing to do. A form of madness really. 

I'm giving a talk to the Institute of Occupational Medicine tomorrow, and I want to say something about this. They won't want to hear about the "lovingness of their world" though. But it is central to people being well - in work or at home. 

People in work today tend to be very stressed. Usually this is because they find it increasingly difficult to make distinctions between the many complex things they have to do. We inhabit a world created by those whose worlds are not loving to them. Seeing a loving world in such an environment is very challenging. But we must try. It is the essence of virtue in a complex and dangerous world.

A friend of mine is very good at making me feel better. What I realise in hindsight she does is to help me to see my world as loving. What an extraordinary gift that is! Now, like so many people these days, she is also overwhelmed with complexity, so I don't hear her so much.  But whatever difficulties we each face, the essence of the gifts we possess (and this gift is particularly special), and the enlivening impact of those gifts on others, cannot be effaced. To all those with special gifts for making others feel better, all we can say is the deepest and most heartfelt "thank you": this really is what life is about. It is timeless.