A source of refuge?

Everyone who enters a healthcare setting is there because of hope and fear.

The 52yo male with high blood pressure.
The 46yo female with Type 2 Diabetes.
The 27yo male with generalized anxiety disorder.
The 4yo female with a nasty cough and an earache.

The are looking to get rid of the pain or discomfort.  They are hoping to feel better.  They don't know what their future holds and they are afraid of untimely death or medical complications.  The process of aging, sickness and death affects us all and it is a lot to handle.

So we ask the doctor, the pharmacist, the nurse or dietician to help us.  And they want to help.

So we give you a medication, set out some treatment goals that have been statistically proven to reduce your long term risk (even as those goals change every couple of years), and we enforce regular follow up and examination.

But we aren't in the business of curing things.

We can get rid of certain infections, cure your kids pink eye (if its bacterial).  We can remove certain tumors and benign growths, but we don't cure much of anything.

We can't even cure acid reflux (but here is a Prilosec).  Funny isn't it, how easy it is to direct you to a pill instead of doing the hard work of recommending a change in your diet and lifestyle and following up on that change.  What if a doctor's first words weren't as simple as take this?

So people come to us, looking for health, to feel better and to remove the fear of death and the unknown.  We give them a pill.  A subscription prescription for health.   A placebo would not be a moral treatment, but placebo or active medication the cure rate would remain the same.  Zero. 

That is because the cure lies in you.  If there is a cure at all. 

It is your choices, your decisions and actions.  It took a long while to get where you are, and it won't reverse over night.  But if you care about your health, your well being and happines, then you need to take responsibility for it. 

Do you turn the keys to your health, well being and happiness over to others?
Or do you own it?  Take the keys.  In the meantime, we are still here to help you manage your symptoms and reduce your long term risk while you make those changes. 

That is what we should be here for- helping you in the pursuit of your own health and well being.  Empowering you, providing the support and filling in the knowledge gaps. 

This is about our healthcare system, but it also applies to our work, religion, happiness- everything.

Take the keys. 

Awaiting your fate.

You've gotten this far, you have fought and battled, weathered the storm.  You have persisted in the face of fear, doubt and uncertainty.  You have put up with the pain and discomfort, made the most of your situation.

You have made it this far,
and now you are in a waiting room.

Waiting to get called, to get picked.
Waiting to get cleared.
Waiting to hear if you are healthy or sick.
If you are going to live or die.

Will you live to see another day, another month, another year?

When will I break free from this endless cycle?
Oh, how I long for freedom from this...

"Gregory, right this way".

We'll see what fate holds.

Self-Help vs. Self-Liberation

Hold on a moment, what are you asking me to do?

You are asking me to be open and vulnerable?  You want me to expose my open wounds, to re-open those scars?

You want me to face my fears?  To acknowledge the things I would rather forget?  To dredge the depths of my pain and sorrow? 

I don't want to remember those that have had to leave me too early.  Nor do I care to relive those memories that haunt me to this very day. 

It is too scary.  Way to painful.  I am too tired, too busy to do this right now. 

But it is still there, right?

Even when we try to hide from it, it sneaks up on us.  If we fight to push it away, it keeps fighting back.  There doesn't seem to be any escape.

Everything that we have done to move on has failed.  Better to ignore it and hope it doesn't haunt our sleep.  But year after year, that date comes or we visit that place and we feel it looming over us.

How can we escape it?

The practice of self-help does not work, it only nourishes the ground. You need to rely on the path of self-liberation.

It rests on three principle aspects of the practice:
1.  Calm the coarse levels of your mind.
2.  Engender in that calm a sense of warmth, love and compassion.
3.  Rest in openness, your natural state of being.  

It will be painful.  Raw.  You will feel sensitive, embarrassed and inadequate.  You will feel hopeless.

And these are good signs.  This means that you are giving up your fixation.  Letting go of the ground you have been holding onto.

These are signs that you are becoming more open, more aware, that you are making progress.

As you move through the storm, through all the sheer winds and rain, you'll discover in its wake a calm, crisp freshness.  A natural openness and ease will ensue and your mind will be freed from its constraints. 

This is actually the most helpful thing you can do for yourself. 

Escape the Castle

There is a story going around town. 

It's in our schools, our workplace and in our retirement planning.  Even our healthcare, really. 

It wants you to believe that if you stay here, trust in the process, then everything will be provided for you.  It is safe and secure, providing protection against long-term risks.  You will be given lots of opportunity to enjoy yourself, make your mark.  If your good- which you are- then you will come to know money, power and status.  You will be provided with every comfort and need.  You will live a good, healthy life. 

The moral of the story is that if you put in the time and the effort then you can escape all the pain and discontentment that you are currently facing.  That someday you too can sail off into the sunset.

Of course the castle story is a fairy tale. 

Money, power, fame and position all bring their own attendants of suffering and discontentment.  Even if we can achieve a relatively comfortable lifestyle, their is still something missing, a hollowness that all of the excess and non-stop distraction cannot fill. 

It is time to escape the castle. 

But what does that mean?  How do we actually do it?

The first thing we need to do is shift our perspective.  Our current perspective is that our happiness, satisfaction and contentment come from things outside of us.  Our achievements, success, position; even our families.  What happens when our spouse or kids leave?  What then? 

So the shift in perspective is a shift from cultivating outer wealth and enjoyments to the cultivation of inner wealth and enjoyments. 

But let's be clear here- this shift in perspective is not about guilt.  If you feel guilty about your achievements, your success, your position, your outer wealth, then that is a reflection of your own poverty mentality.  Poverty mentality might have to take on a new meaning here as well, poverty mentality refers to the lack of your own inner qualities.  Your lack of inner wealth. 

So this actually requires a great deal of responsibility.  Actually, this burden is extremely heavy.  We are responsible for our own happiness and contentment.  We need to actually cultivate this inner wealth, we need to train our minds and push through all of our own insecurities, doubt and self-pity. 

No one can do this for us. 

But this is not the path of guilt, nor the path of poverty.  You have great potential and you have all of these resources available to you.  You have the opportunity to use your leisure and enjoyments for good use. 

Outwardly, you don't need to change a thing. 

You only need to conquer your mind. 

Two Faced

I am two faced, in the most literal sense of the word.

The right side of my face doesn't work, at least not very well.  Those who know me may know the full story, but basically my right facial nerve was severed and my face was reconstructed with one of my tongue nerves to preserve muscle tone and the possibility of preserved function, ie. a smile.   

The result is uncomfortable, tight, awkward and sometimes, downright ugly.

I have tried a lot of things to try to remove the pain and discomfort, to hide the awkwardness.  Acupuncture, chiropractic, massage- it all helps for a little while.  I've tried posturing, letting my left side (good side) face others so hopefully they wouldn't notice the disproportion or my twitching eye- but it is pretty hard to hide a shit show. 

Mainly I just recognize that this is something that is always going to be there.  I need to know how to work with it in all of its tightness and dysfunction.  I needed to stop pretending, stop hiding.  You can't be what others want you to be, you need to be willing to show your true face. 

When you look in a mirror (or the mirror of your mind) you only see the bad parts, your inadequacy and failure.  You need to look yourself right in the eye, that is the only way to save face.  If you speak from the heart with honesty and integrity, then even if people pick up on the awkwardness it doesn't matter, because they are looking you in the eye. 

Now for a story:
Awhile back, there was this cute, little old lady who used to come into my work.  She would always come in, chat me up, tell me what she was doing.  Then one day she said to me, "Why don't you ever smile for me?"

"I can't smile", I replied.

"Sure you can, everyone can smile."

"Not me."  I was just being honest, I can't fake a smile very well.

"Oh, come on, just a little one?"  At that moment, her granddaughter was looking at me with the right side of her face pinched in a half-cocked smile. 

I laughed.  Kids are so perceptive of this stuff.

"Oh that wasn't so bad, next time you can give me a full one," she replied.  Then I explained my situation, which kind of made her feel bad.  She left, apologizing and probably feeling pretty uncomfortable and awkward.

The next day she came in with an envelope.  She said, "Sorry about yesterday, but when I got home you reminded me of someone so I wanted to give you this," handing me the envelope she left.

I opened the envelope and inside was the picture of a young Elvis Presley with his half-cocked smile.

I smiled and laughed.  She was being generous.

That was Dolores.  She passed away a few years ago, shortly after this exchange actually.  We never know what people are hiding or what their future holds for them.  We can only hope that when the time comes, they show up with generosity, love and kindness.

So on this Memorial Day, I would like to thank all of you out there for your generosity, for the months, years or moments that you have committed yourself to serving the welfare of others.

We honor your service.