This series is based on a chapter in Napoleon Hill’s classic read “Think and Grow Rich” introducing basic human fears. I dub them the 7 Chakras of Fear. From Death and Old Age we challenge the Fear of Ill Health.
What if you were suddenly infirmed…bed ridden? What would change…how fast? What would come of your ambitions, aspirations and dreams? What of your friendships and dearest relationships? What of the money you can’t earn, or save? What of your responsibility to family, and what of your faith?
“Everyone who is born holds dual citizenship, in the kingdom of the well and in the kingdom of the sick. Although we all prefer to use only the good passport, sooner or later each of us is obliged, at least for a spell, to identify ourselves as citizens of that other place.” Susan Sontag’s reminder that though we wish for good health, we will suffer from disease, injury and the fate of choices made over time.
Ill health is the original sin, committed against ourselves. But what of the original question – what is health? Is it a sense of feeling good? Is it a feeling of being fit? Is it being thin, or is it simply avoiding sickness?
According to WHO (The World Heath Organization): health is a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely an absence of disease or infirmity. The Encyclopedia of Natural Medicine cuts to the chase and points fingers: health is the result of an individual responsibility of choosing healthy over non-healthy.
The weakest link in human health is human choice. Mark Twain got it right when he quipped, “the only way to keep your health is to eat what you don’t want, drink what you don’t like, and do what you’d rather not.“ Twain – for the record – died of a heart attack.
Health at times seems fickle even unfair: chain smokers living to 100, or athletes dying in their prime only justify excuses for poor choices and sloth. But on the other hand, turning obsessive-compulsive – aka a fitness Nazi – can’t guarantee a clean bill of health either. The saddest irony is sculpting a strong temple in flesh, but around a fearful mind that conjures up illness on its own.
Interesting to know, 75% of all visits to doctors and physicians are made by people suffering imagined physical symptoms of a disease they fear – common hypochondria. In raw contrast, doctors and nurses tend to the sick and contagious – even through pandemics – never allowing themselves to fall victim to disease. Immunity for them comes from an absolute lack of fear of disease.
We fear illness like our ancestors feared mercurial Gods. No disrespect intended, but even atheists respect the wrath of disease. We all fear becoming citizens in a subculture of the sick: taking residence in sanitariums and hospitals, being infirmed within the walls of our own homes or being reduced to living dead trapped inside a body diseased and in decay. To know such a fate can befall us – haunts us.
We suffer the seeds of fear from forces over which we have no control: death and growing old. However, the specter of ill health presents us a measure of influence over providence. That is, should we choose to do the things we sometimes rather not.
Fear need not be a factor in ill, merely a fever to be broken. ck
